


Elegy of Lost Souls

by Galaxy_Cerebri



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Canon, Canon Compliant, F/M, If Byleth was a transmigrator, Reincarnated Byleth, Reincarnation, Religious Conflict, Spoilers, Unreliable Narrator, canon but different, canon novelisation, mostly - Freeform, sorta - Freeform, where somethings are the same but some are different
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-29
Updated: 2019-09-12
Packaged: 2020-07-24 19:04:01
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 13
Words: 43,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20019493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Galaxy_Cerebri/pseuds/Galaxy_Cerebri
Summary: Jeralt- no, that wasn’t right. Her father, had always called her an old soul. He never said it to be cruel, frankly he only truly said it when she was a young child and he thought she wasn’t in earshot. But the thing about kids, is that they’re tiny little thieves who can be everywhere you don’t want to them be. So Byleth could hear it. As much as he professed that he was proud of her, she could still hear the way it made him uncomfortable. The cautious tone he would have when he would walk up to her and ask what she was doing whenever she stared off into space.Where Byleth is on her second try at life and she really wants some indoor plumbing, thanks.





	1. A Lost Soul Adrift

Jeralt- no, that wasn’t right. Her father, had always called her an old soul. He never said it to be cruel, frankly he only truly said it when she was a young child and he thought she wasn’t in earshot. But the thing about kids, is that they’re tiny little thieves who can be everywhere you don’t want to them be. So Byleth could hear it. As much as he professed that he was proud of her, she could still hear the way it made him uncomfortable. The cautious tone he would have when he would walk up to her and ask what she was doing whenever she stared off into space. 

Nevertheless, she respected him for always trying to be there despite his duties as Commander to a band of mercs. Even though, she could still remember dulcet tones humming her to sleep, rocking her from side to side, even when she could remember a deep, gruff voice coaxing her closer as she pedalled slowly forward on her first bike, she was grateful to have him. Not many would cast a blind eye when she would say would say words of wisdom beyond her age. Not many would encourage it, for that matter. So she _was_ grateful. He wasn’t particularly cold (she could remember an old friend having a cold father, emotionless and cruel, never watching his words and destroying her self esteem until she never felt the need to try anything because ‘once a failure, always a failure’) Jeralt wasn’t callous enough for that. Rather it seemed he was never really sure what to say to her.

Their one source of bonding had been combat. When he had placed a balanced knife in her hand and told her that the weight of it would sit on her shoulders as all actions have consequences. Possibly not the best thing to say to a five year old, but this seemed like Lord of the Rings on crack but without all the fun of elves and dwarfs and interspecies politics. Fódlan had Crests instead, which were arguably worse. Interbreeding, closely scrutinised marriage contracts and, oh, _interbreeding_ all so nobles could have these magic powers passed down from Heroes and Saints long since dead to maintain a status quo that allows a pretty harsh church to maintain its place as the strongest political force in a continent with a Monarchy, an Empire and a Republic. The only upside was that it wasn’t crusade happy, like the last church she knew about.

Thankfully, her father wasn’t particularly fond of the church for reasons unknown so she was able to stay as far from it as possible (she was never one for religion, the anxiety in her memories making her scrutinise her own actions in fear of the judgement from those around her, she didn’t particularly like remembering the possibility of an omnipotent and omniscient being out there doing that exact thing). 

Of course, nobles do so love their Goddess and the Church of her Saint Seiros, so she was obligated to turn up for the occasional mass with her father to allow their mercenary band to keep up its social status and contracts. Can’t upset the idiots giving you their money to kill their cousin, after all. She never thought that there was a certain amount of politicking needed to maintain a mercenary group, but wonders never cease. 

The Band avoided central Fódlan on principle, never taking contracts near Garrag Mach, let alone the castle-like Monastery. They kept to the outer coast of the continent, only ever entering the central territories when contractual obligations forced them to.

She recalled asking her father why he avoided the Church, she knew her own reasons (disdain for a religious institution that put such heavy emphasis on an aristocratic system that would slowly destroy itself with murder ploys, backstabbing and marrying their cousins to find, keep and gain Crests whilst slowly depleting resources from a fragile working class) but Jeralt’s had always been a mystery to her. It was only when she was older, yet not particularly wiser (something Jeralt would say was a good thing whilst tenderly ruffling her hair that one night when she was fifteen, for if she got any wiser she could and likely would topple kings), that he told her of his past.

He had been a Knight of Seiros once upon a time. He had protected a Bishop and was given a job as a knight. He had been there for what felt like eons but, like his daughter, he never felt comfortable with the idea of Crests and the blind devotion. Sometimes, questioning could strengthen faith but battle after battle had been fought in Seiros and in turn the Goddess’ name and he could never feel comfortable around those who would use that as an excuse for their actions (“Either face the consequences without hiding behind the Goddess, or don’t do them in the first place,” he had said that night, peering into the dark swill he called ale). And the way that the church got involved in disputes that it had no place sticking its nose into made him wary.

(“Isn’t that a little hypocritical,” she had asked him, her voice soft under the rambunctious rough housing of her elders as they celebrated another victorious battle with alcohol and song.

“ _We_ get paid to do it, sometimes it felt like the Archbishop was trying to sway things in her favour, not necessarily the church's,” he replied before shrugging and swallowing the remnants of his drink, “Honestly, you’d have to meet her to understand what I’m talking about and I pray that you never have to do that.”)

So he had left, had a daughter, lost his love and tried to be a good parent despite a daughter that was the exemplar of the word “Odd” and a bunch of drunk idiots for employees. But they were _his_ drunk idiots which made it mildly tolerable. His daughter on the other hand, he was happily stuck with so she would always be a pain in the ass (“I mean it in an affectionate way,” he had said to her when she side eyed him. “In my defence you called our employer a sanctimonious bastard who married his sister,” he told her, sighing when she maintained the expression “To his face.”

“Truth hurts, doesn’t it?” she had retorted, with an expressionless face but there was a slight lilt to her tone that belied amusement).

Regardless of the madness that she had found herself in, with a new name and appearance - and hadn't _that_ been jarring, waking up as someone else in the body of a baby. She had never been one to believe in transmigration or reincarnation, but hey, the universe had proved her wrong. She had been bitter and mad at dying so young in her old world, but a scarred, grizzled man she would come to call Father cajoled her into this new life.

Fact of the matter was, when she had taken that dagger from her father, she had said goodbye to Halcyon days. She hoarded daggers and short swords like she hoarded books. Knowledge and weaponry becoming her fixation, like a dragon hoarding its gold. Bows were picked up along the way and somehow, almost without realising, she had become the Band’s assassin.

Once she was able to get past the crippling existential horror that she was a murderer (nights spent holding back tears as she was forced to accommodate to the new world order she found herself in. She had heard of ‘It’s kill or be killed’ in a long distant past to excuse soul crushing capitalism but Fódlan took it to a whole new level), life wasn’t _bad_ . Not good because bathtubs were set up manually, meaning you couldn’t sit in the bath and read with occasional top offs of hot water unless you got out and froze for a bit or called someone in and that _sucked_ but outside of the small things here and there, life was pretty _good_ in fact. Her father loved her in his own way, a man of gestures rather than words and much like her he was a ruthless pragmatist at heart so, of course he made sure her sword arm was near perfection and had already had a mind for tactics that just needed to be polished.

Eventually her soft hands that had never known violence in all her years could deftly carry a blade. She could see the arc of an arrow, and dodge with a backflip when a world away she couldn’t run for the bus without heart palpitations and chest pain. She could see the tide of battle shift and whirl like an ocean in a storm as enemies would race by and fly overhead. She could note who was in the most danger. At some point in her life, the sound of armour shaking with movement had both become something soothing as well as something to be cautious of.

(“Byleth,” her father groaned as she came back from wherever she had disappeared to. The enemy had suddenly begun to retreat, and from the bloody dagger she held in a reverse grip, it was likely because their commander had taken a knife to the back and was lying dead in a pool of his own blood. “His hubris was his reckoning, father,” she stated, wiping her weapon down with a cloth she had pulled out from seemingly nowhere “He had left his back open and most of the soldiers didn’t want to fight us, anyway.”

Jeralt sighed, patting her on the head as he said “one day, your ruthless pragmatism will get you in trouble, kiddo.”

“But you’ll be there to help me?” as always her face blank but a tinge of hope bled into her voice while she stared up at the armoured cavalier.

“Of course,” he replied with a smirk “Right after I say, I told you so.”)

Their life was peaceful in a way, if one were to exclude all the violence and bloodshed. Even with it, their lives were surprisingly simple. Pretend to be average worshipers to keep patrons, stab a few people, quietly hate the Church of Seiros and the current political climate - albeit that last one was mostly Byleth. And wasn’t that a funny name? Byleth, pronounced Beleth. You know, like that demon from the Ars Goetia? A holy knight - even if a former one -, naming his daughter after a demon, the irony was _not_ lost on her.

It was only looking back that she realised that, whilst she had indeed had to trade computers for tomes, skyscrapers for castles and functional plumbing for swords, but it was the - not monotonous but something damn near close - life she had and it was comfortable.

But things started to change as all things must with the passage of time. With the spring sun falling on the eve of the Harpstring moon, new life awakened as the harvest drew nearer with every passing day. Flowers bloomed on the edges of forest paths, tickling her feet along with grass. She had taken off her sandal-like shoes to relax and sat in the field on the edge of their camp of tents when sleep ran from her fingertips. A yawn pulled at Byleth’s lips as she stretched. Scratching her chin, she couldn’t help but be wary of what the night would bring. 

They were closer to the Garreg Mach Monastery than she could ever recall but a job in the Kingdom of Faerghus had forced them to take this path of least resistance. Any other way would have brought them even closer to the Church’s doorstep and there were only so many scriptures Byleth could pretend to know until she was caught as a blaspheming apostate. She had stepped outside for nary a moment, when her father walked up to her from behind. His boots loudly crushing grass and weeds with every step.

“You could stand to be a little quieter,” she said irreverently, not bothering to look back at him from where she had taken a seat.

“Not all of us have to sneak into enemy territory and sabotage people,” he replied before bluntly inquiring, “Same dream?”

“As always,” was the almost bitter reply. For night upon night, she went through the same dream over and over again. Where a small green haired women in ceremonial garb asked her name and who she was. It haunted her not dissimilar to a nightmare in its eeriness and it never failed to steal away her sleep.

“We should be on the road tomorrow morning,” he told her, giving a small smile of fondness as her face took on the closest approximation of a pout that she could make “I’ll let you sleep on Leia as we travel.”

“Do you have Leia’s permission?” she asked with utmost seriousness, looking at Jeralt’s horse as it grazed on some grass. Jeralt let out a chuckle.

“We both know she loves you more than me,” he grinned

“As she should,” Byleth said, practically radiating smugness. 

There was a calming nature to every conversation she had with her father. No roundabout underhandedness to their words, no need to worm to the heart of the matter. Both of them were brutally honest, even when they felt they couldn’t speak on a matter. The mercenaries they worked with cooed at the father-daughter pair. Obstinate daughter taking after her equally obstinate father, they would all say whenever Byleth did something particularly boorish.

But eventually their comforting silence was broken when one of the mercenaries on night watch ran up to them and called for their attention. Guiding them to the front of the camp, they came face to face with three armoured warriors wearing a uniform of sorts. Each wore a different colour with the base black, an earnest blond in blue, the white haired girl with red accents and the last of the three, a boy with a scheming smile, in a yellow that looked like mustard under the light of the moon. Her father obviously recognised the uniform or it was familiar to him at the very least but by his slowly paling face, it was obviously not a good thing.

“Please forgive our intrusion, we would not bother you had the situation not been dire,” the blond greeted with a polite bow that showed his upper class upbringing, very rarely did someone offer them such a courtesy. Ironically, most nobles disrespected the men and woman they were hiring to be their blades. Some, a very small but smart few, had the common sense to have a healthy dose of fear towards Jeralt’s mercenaries.

“What do a bunch of kids like you want at this hour of night?” her father asked, his words accusatory, his tone wary.

“We’re being pursued by a group of bandits,” the blond answered easily “I can only hope that you will be so kind as to lend your support.”

Byleth cooly raised a hand, rubbing her thumb against her index and middle fingers. The universal sign for money. The three strangers all had differing responses to her actions. The girl in red tensed, the blond looked shocked, but the yellow garbed male smirked. Rolling his eyes, her father said “Ignore my daughter, this incident might set us back a few days on a job and she’s a little worried it’ll cut into our pay.”

The trio of young warriors raised an eyebrow in unison, as if to say ‘she doesn’t look worried’ (and really, who was she to call them young, they seemed to be the same age as her). “You say that like you aren’t one as well,” Byleth countered, crossing her arms as she looked at her father..

Jeralt didn’t throw something back, shaking his head to indicate it wasn’t the time for their usual banter as he requested for more information. “We’ve been separated from our companions, they’re after our lives,” the male in yellow explained “Not to mention our gold.” The last part was added as an aside whilst he looked at Byleth from they corner of his eye, a grin pulling at his lips. A new light _didn’t_ find its way into Byleth’s eyes at his words, but that wasn’t to say it _did_ either.

“I’m impressed that you’re staying so calm considering the situation,” her father said, the closest thing they would get to a praise from him. “That uniform-” he started, his eyes narrowing shrewdly but before he could get another word in edgewise, another mercenary from the night's watch came rushing toward them with the words “Bandits spotted just outside the village!” flying from his tongue.

Jeralt swore, noting that the bandits must have followed the trio. “We can’t abandon the village now,” her father said, adding “We can but we _shouldn’t_ ,” to correct his wording, long having gotten used to Byleth’s pedantic nature - He wasn’t going to complain though, it had helped them find many reputable customers for their needs in the years since she had joined the mercenary group as an assassin.

“Get your gear,” he said, turning to look at his daughter, “You get to stab your aggression away, again.”

“Oh joy,” she cheered, but the void of emotion made it sound nearly sarcastic.


	2. The Woman Who Moved Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byleth dies again, but somehow doesn't? She's just as confused as the rest of us.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so grateful for the response I have had since I first posted, you guys are amazing >///< I hope you all continue to support the fic!

It had been merely a skirmish. Or rather, it was  _ meant  _ to be merely a skirmish. But things that are meant to merely be something, rarely stay that way. Sneaking in and stabbing the guy was usually fairly easy for Byleth, but usually she’s on her own and she doesn’t have to worry about someone at her six. Except, this time she did and it was the girl in red who had knocked down the bandit leader.

Rallied by the cheers of his subordinates, the large man with the size of a bodybuilder hopped back onto his feet and went rushing for the girl. Byleth, in a panic (they always say that a plan never truly survives first contact with the enemy and for the most part, but Byleth's nit-picking and almost obsessive planning countered it well enough. What she had never gotten used to was the train - her plan in this analogy - completely derailing. In her defence, how does one ever prepare themselves for the possibility that things will get fucked up beyond all recognition), leapt in front of the girl and took the hit from his axe. 

Byleth had felt pain before. Of course she had, she was a mercenary specialising in infiltrating enemy lines to quickly dispose of the opposing commander to cut battle short. There's always a chance she could get caught, especially considering she preferred to do non lethal takedowns. She had felt what a blade could do to her skin when it made contact mid-swing. It cleaved through skin and muscle but this was on a whole different scale as the cracked blade inched through skin and met muscle and she screwed her eyes shut in an attempt to endure. But just as quickly as it had come, the pain was gone.

The world turned grey, as if the new life spring had been cut short and sucked away by an unseen force. In a second, her eyes snapped open again and she looked around in a rush. She stood steadfast in an abyss of black where there was no floor in sight. The only thing in view was the woman from her dreams, laying casually on a throne carved from rock at the top of a set of stairs.

Like an angry queen, the green haired woman glared at Byleth, leaning against the armrest of the throne. “What were you trying to accomplish with that little stunt?!” she seethed, as if scolding a petulant child “It’s like you were trying to get me killed, you fool!” After a brief moment of silence, she sighed. “Well, it’s fine. After all, if you don’t know the true value of your own life, you’re not going to protect it very well, are you?”

When Byleth said nothing, tensing, stiff, raising her blade in anticipation. The woman rolled her eyes, “Of course not,” she answered herself. Getting to her feet with a giggle, she clapped her hands. “Well then, I guess it’s up to me to guide you from now on,  _ right _ ?” 

“You may call me… Sothis. But I’m also known as ‘The Beginning’.” she introduced, her face contorted in confusion “But who once called me that…”

“Sothis?” Byleth asked lowering her blade slightly when Sothis didn’t immediately attack her. With a hand curled around her chin, Sothis explained “I couldn’t recall my name until just now and just like that, it came to me.”

“That look upon your face… Did you think me a child? One who would forget her own life?,” Sothis accused, scoffing she said “This  _ mere child _ just saved your life! And what does that make  _ you _ ?”

“I’m… less than a child?” Byleth offered, tilting her head to obviate her confusion as her face wouldn’t change.

“I’d say you understand,” Sothis began, “But there’s something about your soul… your mind… you have lived for far longer than you should have. What  _ are  _ you?”

“A mortal,” Byleth answered, shrugging. 

Sothis shook her head in disbelief “No, no, your soul wouldn’t feel like this if you were a mortal, tell me the truth.”

Looking up at the woman, Byleth replied “My father calls me a long lived child, I have nothing else to give you.”

Sighing, Sothis ran a hand through her hair. “For someone so long lived, I would think you would have the common sense to not throw yourself in front of an axe.”

“I saved the girl.”

“At the cost of your own life,” Sothis threw back. “All is well, I have stalled the flow of time,  _ for now _ . You would have died had I not intervened.”

Byleth coolly thanked her before asking how she  _ stopped time _ . Humming, Sothis taunted “I don’t sense gratitude in your words, perhaps I should place you back from whence you came.”

“My father says you will rarely sense emotion in my words, but that doesn’t mean they lack it,” Byleth informed her “Now, back onto the topic of you  _ stopping time _ ?”

Waving her hand dismissively, Sothis explained “Though it is only momentarily, time has stopped.”

“So what will happen when time restarts?”

“Obviously,” Sothis drawled “When time restarts, that axe will tear into your flesh and you will meet your end. How rude of you to drag me into this. Now what to do...”

Sheathing her blade, Byleth stepped forward. Despite the lack of floor, a click resounded with every footstep akin to her heel hitting stone. “If you can stop time, it stands to reason that you may be able to reverse its effects.”

With a smile, Sothis nodded and concurred. Before her, a glowing white glyph spun into existence. Perfect geometric shapes and complementary symbols were surrounded by ring upon ring, holy words spun around it. “It can be done,” she spoke, her hands moving in gestures as the glyph shifted in symbol and shape to accommodate their plan. “You really are troublesome, you know?”

Byleth shrugged “My father says it makes me endearing.”

Sothis let out a surprised laugh. “I cannot say he’s wrong, but he isn’t  _ right  _ either.”

Looking at the new glyph closely, Sothis decreed “I cannot rewind time too far, lest I unravel existence-”

“And nobody wants that.”

“No, but all is well. You know what is to come, which means you can use your head and protect yourself properly, this time,” Sothis completed “Do try not to make a mess again.”

“Now go,” she ordered “Ye who bears the mark of flames within, drift through the flow of time to find the answers you seek.”

In a swirl of light, she felt the world shift. Once more her eyes snapped open to find the moment where things had gone wrong last time. Tightening the grip on her blade, she darted forward and stabbed the bandit leader in the side before he could even raise his axe. Slipping away as fast as she had arrived, she put herself in front of the girl like last time, but the difference now was that now she had the advantage.

The bandit leader stumbled backward, holding his wound as he called for the retreat.

“Should we be letting him get away?” the girl asked, a little judgement in her voice. Byleth shook her head “No, but the fact of the matter is, with most of the mercenary band trying to secure the village, we don’t have the kind of resources you’re suggesting to take him down if his bandits decide to retaliate.”

“Hey! Over there!” a voice called, catching their attention. Raising her blade once more in anticipation, she turned to find the other two parts of the trio walking up to them as her father galloped to join them. “Is everyone alright?”

Before anyone could respond a small battalion came rushing out of the thick forest with swords ready to fight. The leader, a heavily armed man with the worst kind of mustache (you know, the ones usually in shitty porn videos from the 90s, a horseshoe beard without the goatee. The one Hulk Hogan had. They were horrible), exclaimed “The Knights of Seiros are here! We’ll cut you down for terrorizing our students!”

In perfect unison, the father daughter pair cursed,“Oh crap…” Jeralt looked at the three they had saved and said “I knew I recognised those uniforms.”

“You couldn’t have recognised them faster?” Byleth groused

“No point complaining now,” Jeralt scolded, “We can’t change the past.”

“Easy for you to say,” Byleth mumbled under her breath.

“Huh?” Jeralt said, as if daring his daughter to say it louder.

“Huh?” she replied, feigning innocence. It went horribly of course because she didn’t even try to change her blank facial expression into something more believable. When the knight captain noted the bandits running away, he sent most of the battalion after them as he turned and began for the five left behind.

“The students seem to be unharmed,” he muttered looking the three over before his eyes fell on Jeralt and he asked almost coily “And… who’s this?”

Her father groaned and muttered “Why him?” as he got off Leia. His armour scraping and sliding against itself as he landed on the ground with a thud. “Captain Jeralt?!” the knight exclaimed, leaning back to take in the sight of said man “It is you! Goodness, it’s been ages! Don’t you recognise me? It’s Alois! Your old right hand man!”

Byleth tilted her head ever so slightly. He didn’t seem like the kind of man her father would choose as a right hand man. “Well, that’s how I always thought of myself anyway,” Alois added. There it was.

“It must have been 20 years ago that you went missing without a trace,” Alois said his smile pulling a little in pain “I always knew you were still alive!” 

Byleth turned to her father, his face was stern and he was getting more annoyed the longer Alois kept talking. He looked at his daughter in his peripheral vision and rolled his eyes, relaxing a little as her eyes took on a light of mirth. Turning back to Alois, he grumbled “You haven’t changed a bit, Alois. Just as loud as ever… and drop that ‘Captain’ nonsense. I’m not your captain anymore. These days I’m just a wandering mercenary.”

“One who has work to do,” Byleth butted in grabbing her father's arm and beginning to pull him away, because if he wasn’t going to end the conversation before it became a problem then she would. As little interaction with the Church of Seiros as possible was their unspoken deal, and yet here he was reneging on it for the sake of politeness.

“Goodbye old friend,” Jeralt said, hurrying along with his daughter as she yanked him along with a vice grip and Alois quietly offered his farewells. Suddenly, he jolted in realisation. “Wait!” he called out to them, saying “That isn’t how this ends!” like he was the star of a bad soap opera. He insisted over and over saying they just  _ had _ to return to the academy with them.

With a tone of loathing, Jeralt said “Garrag Mach Monastery… I suppose this was inevitable” In a moment of mourning, Byleth tipped her head back and closed her eyes. Yet again her, not exactly peaceful, life was disrupted by events outside of her control and she was getting fucking sick of it.

“And you, kid? Are you the captain’s child?” Alois asked, nearly bouncing on his heels like a happy dog.

“No, I’m a bandit,” she droned mechanically. Alois obviously didn’t realise her sarcasm as he merely gave a boisterous laugh, the kind that shook your entire body. “Great sense of humour, this one,” he praised “Clearly cut from the same cloth as the Captain. I’d love for you to see the monastery too. You  _ will _ join me, won’t you?”

Byleth looked at father and looked back at her. She nudged her head in Alois’ direction, wordlessly asking ‘Is he serious?’. Jeralt bobbed his head from side to side, answering ‘Yeah, pretty much.’ Looking back at the knight, she nodded. “Very well,”

Noting Jeralt’s stiff body language, Alois asked “What's troubling you, Captain? You aren’t about to run off again, are you?”

“Even I wouldn’t dare run from the Knights of Seiros,” Jeralt said. To anyone else, it might have sounded reverent of the army. To Byleth however, it was a warning to keep her head down and not cause trouble. And if at all possible to not maim or insult those that annoyed her too much.

Left with the three students as her father and Alois walked off to bring preparations for the journey, a familiar voice from the depths of her mind said, “The Knights of Seiros… they do see rather skilled.” Byleth twitched at the sound. Because of course Sothis could ignore the fact that it wasn’t particularly  _ normal _ to hear the voice of a disembodied being coming from your head, continuing to say “It seems your presence is required, get going.”

The three students had all made their way closer, standing in a curve before her. The girl on her right, the blond in front of her and the male in yellow to her left. “I’m Edelgard, I appreciate your help back there, your skill and thought process is beyond question. You’re clearly an experienced mercenary. And your father… that would be Jeralt the Blade Breaker?” the girl asked, introducing herself, “Former Captain of the Knights of Seiros. Oft praised as the strongest knight to ever live. Have I missed anything?”

“I didn’t know he was a captain,” Byleth replied, shrugging tiredly. Her lack of sleep catching up to her.

“How curious, I’d wager the explanation for that is fascinating indeed,” Edelgard stated. 

“Not particularly,” Byleth retorted “He doesn’t like to talk about it, I respect that, we move on with our lives.”

“I… see.”

The third in the trio leaned closer and asked if she was coming with them to the monastery. “I’d love to bend your ear as we travel. I’m Claude”

“Byleth,” she greeted.

“The three of us are students of the Officers Academy at the Monastery,” Claude started, explaining that the entire situation had been as a result of a training exercise gone horribly wrong. “I definitely got the worst of it,” he complained, starting a petty argument about tactical retreats that sent her head spinning. Was she this bad with her father? She didn’t think she was? But then again she didn’t exactly have people to bicker with.

Turning back to her after offering a beautiful roast (“Ah, so that’s what you were thinking Claude? And here I thought you were acting as a decoy for the sake of us all,”), the blond looked back at Byleth and introduced himself as Dimitri before Edelgard scolded him for not being able to see the truth behind someone’s words, which was quickly countered with a scolding of looking for deceit behind every word. 

As Dimitri and Edelgard continued their own little argument between themselves, Claude moved next to Byleth and mumbled “Oh joy, a royal debate between Their Highnesses. I wonder how being completely predictable affects one’s ability to wield power.” Like a snake in the grass, Claude then said “Personally, as the embodiment of distrust, I’d say your little exchange smacks of naivete.”

Of course setting Edelgard off once more as she threw an insult. Yawning, Byleth raised her thumb and index to her mouth and let out a fierce whistle that spooked not only the students but the birds and squirrels resting in nearby trees.

“It is  _ way _ too late in the evening, or rather, its too early in the morning for this crap,” Byleth said “Try again tomorrow when I can spare the energy to care about your petty disagreements, hm?”

With that, Byleth walked off to follow after her father. Deciding that dealing with Alois’ boisterous nature was better than whatever fresh hell  _ that  _ was. “Please tell me I’m nothing like that?” she asked her father, more or less pleading with him to say no. Which he did, except he added on “You just stab people and insult our clients, which is arguably worse considering context.”

Ruffling her hair he helped her onto Leia before climbing in front of her as dawn began to break. “Get some rest, kid. You’re gonna need it when we speak with Rhea.”

“That’s the bishop you left the monastery because of, right?” she whispered, smooshing her face against the least armoured section of his back as he moved the horse into a gentle trot. He silently nodded. “ _ Archbishop _ . It looks like my prayers were answered after all these years,” he said, remembering the discussion they had all those years ago “But it seems, the answer was no.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in one cutscene, Sothis looked to be the same height as Byleth (but that might have been because she might have been floating now that I think about). So for the most part, I'll be describing her as a small woman. More of Byleth's dark humour slips into the story, and we come to realise she's a bit of an unreliable narrator.
> 
> In the meantime, if you don't follow me on tumblr or insta, I have stopped mooching off my sister's macbook, which I will likely be returning tomorrow since I now have my own laptop [angels singing]. So I can finally get back to making my comic, so fic writing might fall a bit into the backburner but I have up to chapter 4 prewritten (I went feral) so don't worry too much about hiatuses.


	3. Into the Jaws of Death

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byleth is a little overdramatic, but in her defence she was forced into a job she didn't want.

The thing people don’t tell you about falling asleep on a horse is that you really shouldn’t. It hurt to walk once she woke up at noon and had the energy to be a human being as she wandered down the forest path a few paces behind her father. Forced to interact with the three students who were attempting to nab at her attention like excited cats.

It was her job to watch his back after all.

“Forgive my digression last night,” Dimitri apologised, “I should have realised you were tired from the battle, being awake so late into the night. The way you held your ground against the bandits’ leader was captivating, even more so considering your exhaustion! You never lost control of the situation, and it showed me I still have much to learn.” 

He continued to fawn over her until Edelgard rushed in as he took a breath. “Your skill is precisely why I must ask you to consider lending your services to the empire. I might as well tell you now, I am no mere student. I am also the Adrestian Empire’s-”

“Halt Edelgard. Please allow me to finish my own proposition. The Holy Kingdom of Faerghus is in dire need of exceptional individuals like yourself,” Dimitri butted in, jogging to keep pace when she began to power walk away from them, despite the pain in her legs from sleeping on Leia for so long.

“Are they always like this?” she asked Claude who had walked further ahead. He merely laughed, nodding that, yes, they  _ were _ always like this. Turning to look at them with a grin, he exclaimed, “You two are so hasty! Trying to recruit someone you just met. Tactless, really.”

“Personally, I was planning to develop a deep and lasting friendship on our journey back to the monastery before begging for favours,” he told them before shrugging and looking to Byleth and saying, “But since it seems there’s no time for niceties in this world, capable stranger, let’s get right to it. Where do your allegiances lie?”

“Myself,” she replied with ease

“Oh?”

“I’m an assassin,” Byleth explained, “I’m the epitome of dubious nature and untrustworthiness. My clients are usually backstabbers and cheaters. It would be pretty freaking stupid of me to place believe in the concept of allegiances when I’m surrounded by people who disprove its worth all the time.”

With a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes, Claude nodded in understanding before he turned his eyes back to the soldiers ahead of them. “That’s fair. But it must suck never being able to trust anyone.”

“I trust one person,” Byleth corrected. 

“Who’s that?” Edelgard inquired. 

“My father, obviously” Byleth said, “He has my loyalty and… my love.” She had never admitted it before. Going through infancy and puberty again had made her a bitter person, and she’d tried to deny it as much as she could in fear that she was betraying someone that was forever gone from her life now. Mourning a life she was never going to get back. Fact of the matter was, Jeralt had raised her as best as he could. Outside of moral obligation, he didn’t exactly  _ have _ to love his odd child, but he did. He handled her moods (if you could even call them that), and her misbehaviour the best he could and he taught her with a strictness only found in parents.

And in the end he was her  _ father _ and she loved him. How odd.

(Warm hugs, gentle pats on the head, he held her sword up when she was first learning like the first father she had. Except that father had held her bike up, until one day he didn’t need to hold on anymore and she hadn’t even realised. Not until she had gone off so far that by the time she looked back, he wasn’t there anymore.)

Sensing the conversation was waning, Dimitri stepped up to the plate and said, “This will be your first time at the monastery, I’d be happy to show you around.” Holding in a sigh, Byleth tensed as she prepared for yet another argument coming when she had just ended the last and had to restrain the urge to run for Leia again.

“It really is Fódlan in a nutshell,” Claude commented as they neared the edge of the forest. “The good and the bad.” Not bothering to look him in the eye, Edelgard scolded him.

“Like it or not, we’ll be there soon enough.”

As the trees pulled away and the canopy faded from view, Byleth could see her special hell in the distance. Tall spires and poles bearing the church’s flag kissed the sky as clouds drifted along past them. It would have been gorgeous if this wasn’t the one place she didn’t want to step foot in. Ever. The architecture of Fódlan was reminiscent of the gothic european style she had seen growing up so long ago and would never fail to send her down a trail of nostalgia. But here it was almost as if it mocked her for missing the past. A smack in the face reminder that  _ this  _ was the best reminder she would have of the place she had once called home

Another hour's walk found them entering the monastery, passing by chattering students who were surprisingly excited by the mercenaries walking in with the students and the knights, her father’s orange tunic easily noticeable in the sea of drab metal grays and black. Staring unblinkingly at students caused them to rush off fairly quickly (a look that many of her fellow mercenaries compared to looking a Monster in the eyes before it ate you, which she would quickly respond to with ‘Nah, you’re not my taste.’ in a cruelly emotionless tone that sent them all into fits of laughter, having long since gotten used to Byleth’s bone dry, and occasionally absurdist, sense of humour).

Noting her father was looking up into the clouds, she followed his eyes to see a woman with mint green hair wearing a hat of gold and dark blue, akin to a crown, staring down at them with a look that made Byleth’s skin crawl. “Rhea’s watching,” Jeralt said, before looking away and continuing into the entrance hall towards the audience chamber.

Their shoes hit the solid marble floors as they were guided by a servant through the monastery and up to the 2nd floor audience chamber where they would meet the Archbishop. “It’s been years since I’ve last set eyes on this place,” Jeralt said once they were alone, his voice almost wistful if it weren’t for the fact that Byleth knew that, much like herself, he would rather have been anywhere else. “To be forced to see her now...”

Footsteps caught their attention as Lady Rhea and a man with a darker green hair colour in royal blue walked out from a side room to stand before them. Now that Byleth got a good look at her, Rhea seemed harmless, emphasis on the  _ seemed _ . She held her hands clasped together against her chest, to portray a more reserved and vulnerable nature, like she was protecting herself. Soft lilies were placed on either side of her hear at the edge of her crown, because frankly that’s what it  _ was _ now that she could clearly see the gold adornments and jems embossed into it. Fitting for a woman in charge of ‘a ridiculously large religious organisation’, as Jeralt liked to put it.

It was like seeing what an old Pope would have looked like, back in the days of the Papal states, when they were essentially venerable kings who could do no wrong even when they waged ten wars and feuded over the highest seat. Like heirs fighting for the king’s throne before his body was even cold.

“Thank you for your patience,” the man with Rhea said, introducing himself as Seteth, the archbishop’s advisor. The father-daughter pair greeted him in turn respectfully. His face was set in a stern expression, a pile of parchments and files held in one arm, like he would rather be anywhere but speaking with them. Byleth could relate. Stepping forward, Rhea said, “It has been a long time, Jeralt. I wonder… was it the will of the goddess that we have another chance meeting like this?”

Like an ultimate bullshitter, Jeralt bowed respectfully as Byleth watched. “Forgive my silence all these years. Much has happened since we last spoke.”

“So I see,” Rhea commented, “The miracle of fatherhood has blessed you. That is your child, is it not?”

“Yes, born many years after I left this place,” he told her, emphasising the latter half of the sentence, “I wish I could introduce you to the mother of my child… but I’m afraid we lost her to illness.” Rhea offered her condolences, going on to ask for Byleth’s name. The conversation went by fairly quickly despite the overly formal speaking style of Fódlan.

After some more awkward small talk, Rhea asked: “Jeralt. You already know what it is I wish to say. Do you not?”

“You want me to rejoin the Knights of Seiros, don’t you?” he answered, rubbing a hand down his face. “I won’t say no, but…”

Byleth couldn’t figure out why he was entertaining the idea of returning to the Church. It would be harsh to say he hated the Church, it was more that he hated it as an institution under Rhea. Crossing her arms over her chest, she rolled her eyes when Rhea said: “Your apprehension stings.”

Way to guilt trip, Lady Rhea.

“I had expected that Alois would have already asked this of you,” she continued to say before looking to Byleth. “I must step away for now, but I expect some professors will desire a word with you soon. Please listen to what they have to say.”

Bidding them all a quick farewell and taking her leave with Seteth quickly following after. When the pair left, Byleth and Jeralt were left in their own devices. painted by the multicoloured lights passing through the stained glass windows at the back of the room, Byleth looked at her father. A wave of disappointment exuded from her as she stared at her father.

“I can’t believe it. Forced back into the Knights of Seiros,” he complained.

“You didn’t exactly argue your side,” Byleth retorted. Jeralt smiled sardonically. “One does not simply deny the Church, Byl.” he warned her, quoting the phrase she liked to say whenever they did something particularly wild (“One does not simply travel through the Valley of Torment!” she had yelled when they used it to pass from Alliance land into the Kingdom).

“Or rather, one does not simply deny the Archbishop,” she rectified. He chuckled as he nodded his head. “I’m sorry I dragged you into this, Byleth. It looks like I’ll be stuck here for a while… and I’m afraid your services are requested as well.”

“As a mercenary?”

“Nothing like that,” Jeralt answered “They want you to teach, by the sound of it.”

“No.”

“Apparently they’re short a professor” Jeralt continued, a grin growing on his face

“ _ No. _ ”

“With all those lovely children.”

“Kill me.”

Jeralt snickered at her words, “Blame Alois,” he told her, “He was the one that recommended you to Lady Rhea.”

“That woman is  _ shady _ ,” Byleth hissed lowly at the mention of the Archbishop as a beautiful woman walked toward them with an old man at her heels. Jeralt hummed in agreement once they entered earshot, having gotten used to Byleth’s odd turns of phrase. “So,” the woman hummed coyly, looking Jeralt up and down, “You must be the new professor. My, how stern and handsome you are!”

Byleth tried to not puke. It wasn’t the first time someone had tried to flirt with her father but, just like every other time it had happened, Byleth hoped it would be the last time. Awkwardly, Jeralt denied it and pointed a finger towards Byleth. Looking at his daughter he said “You can handle things from here. Good luck.”

With a hand on her shoulder, he leaned in, and whispered, “Watch out for Lady Rhea. I don’t know what she’s thinking, making you a professor like this. She may be up to something. Stay on your guard.” Then he quickly rushed off before the woman could get another word in. Closing her eyes Byleth cursed before turning back to the pair of professors.

The woman looked a little disgruntled. “Oh,” she hummed, “It’s you then? So young…”

The man with her quickly defended Byleth by saying, “Competence and age are not necessarily correlated,  _ as you well know _ .”

Byleth didn’t grin. But oh, how she wanted to. At least there would be someone she'd get along with here. “I am Hanneman, a Crest Scholar and professor at the Officers Academy. I wonder if you bear a Crest of your own. When next you have a moment to spare, I insist that you pay me a visit so we can delve into the subject further.”

Oh,  _ never mind _ . 

“Sure,” she forced out through her teeth.

“I’m Manuela. I too am a professor, a physician, a songstress, and  _ available _ ,” she blatantly flirted. Byleth blankly stared at her in an attempt to ward her off, because really. Not even a minute had passed since she had tried flirting with her father and now she was trying to flirt with Byleth. Yikes. “You’re a songstress?” Byleth asked, trying to move on from the vaguely mortifying concept of being Plan B to her  _ father _ .

“Of course!” the woman crooned “Before I came here, I belonged to a renowned opera company. Perhaps you’ve heard of me? The Mittelfrank Opera Company’s Beautiful, peerless-”

“Please spare our colleague the needless chatter, Manuela,” Hanneman said “Now then, it seems you’ll be in charge of one of the Academy’s three houses. I expect you haven’t been briefed on the system, have you?”

Manuela explained that the students were split into three houses. The segregation was mostly based on their region of origin. ‘So basically bootleg Harry Potter’, Byleth couldn’t help but think. The Black Eagles were for students from the Adrestian Empire, lead by Edelgard who was apparently the Heir Apparent of the Imperial throne. Hanneman continued the explanation with the Blue Lions for students from the Holy Kingdom of Faerghus, the leader was Dimitri, the kingdom’s Crown Prince. And the last house, the Golden Deers for students from alliance. Its leader was Claude, grandson of Duke Riegan.

Because  _ of course _ , the three trouble makers she had saved weren’t just random students. They weren’t even just  _ house leaders _ .  _ They were the heirs to the three major territories of Fódlan _ !

Byleth was quickly left alone in the audience chamber and was told only the House Leaders knew of her new position of professor, like she had even agreed to the position. ‘It’s more fun that way’, were Manuela’s words as she made her way out. Encouraging her to spend time with the students, to help her figure out what house she wanted to teach. But first she should try to get comfortable in the area as the classes were in session at the time.

“Have you no intention of changing your mind, Rhea?” she heard Seteth exclaim from the advisors room off the side of the chamber. “Appointing a stranger - a child, no less! - as a professor at our esteemed academy is-”

The voices stopped after that, Seteth seemingly calming down as Rhea cut his words off lowly enough that Byleth couldn’t hear her through the large wooden doors. Sighing, she walked out of the chamber and made her way toward the courtyard, beginning to make the rounds and figure out what the hell her life had come to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of a shorter chapter, but I felt it was a good point to stop personally. Next chapter has Byleth choosing which house to teach (we all know which though ^v^). Again, Byleth is an unreliable narrator and despite not explicitly saying it, she does hate her new world just a little bit because it's not her _old_ one.
> 
> As a side note, I might ramp up the rating to M but it's only a possibility for now. Not much will change but there are some upcoming scenes that aren't graphic but do mention of certain things that I will be putting a TW for in the before chapter notes when they come up, but then again this is a game with political intrigue and the violence it does but it's rated 12 XD. Tell me what you think about it in the comments.


	4. A Golden Deer and her Fawns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byleth sneaks and chooses her house

It started as such.

She had entered the receiving hall to find Edelgard at the other end, near the door she needed. Sighing, she retreated into the courtyard, opting to take the long way, only to see the two other house leaders in the greens. Cursing, she ducked under a hedge behind Dimitri and did a quick tactical run past him. It had all been going rather well when she stood up with a sigh of relief only to hear coughing from beside her.

Slowly, she turned her head. Claude, who had been standing just outside the Golden Deers Common Room, had made his way over to the hallway she had escaped to. He waved with the smile of a snake as if he were far away instead of standing right in front of her. “Well well,” he said slyly “Scored a new teaching gig here, did ya? Talk about a great first impression.”

“Would be if I was being given an option on taking it,” she retorted, “But I’ll take it seriously, at the very least for the poor souls that have to be my students.” Claude laughed at her words, giving a quick bow as he officially introduced himself. He casually waved his duty as heir to the leading seat of the Roundtable Alliance off, referring to it as ‘madness’. (It was both interesting and worrisome that a Great Heir would wave such a thing off. Interesting that he was humble despite his role in the future, but slightly worrisome that he didn’t seem to take it seriously. But then again… he didn’t seem like the type of person to obviate his true opinions.)

“I’m guessing you don’t know which class you’ll be teaching yet, do you? I bet you’d like ours. We’re not as… difficult as the other two.”

“I’m getting the feeling,” she replied dragging him behind one of the pillars in the corridor to hide from Dimitri’s view. “You can continue now,” she instructed. At his raised eyebrows, she said “I’m not getting dragged into another argument between you three because you can’t get along. If that means I have to hide, so be it. I’m willing to suffer for some peace. Please, continue with the sales pitch.” With that, she gestured with a hand for him to keep going.

With a wry grin, he nodded and began to describe his classmates with a sense of pride. It was interesting how a man whose smile never reached his eyes could speak with the kind of emotion and conviction that could possibly sway anyone. Eventually his spiel on the other Golden Deers (Procrastinator Hilda, who could convince just about anyone to do her chores. Quiet Marianne who could be amazing at faith magic if only she trusted herself, kind hearted giant Raphael who had lost his parents but was one of the brightest people around, little Lysithea who was a prodigy of reason magic, but hated being reminded of her age, and so many others).

She obviously had to talk to Dimitri and Edelgard for the sake of respect (because she was going to be stuck around the little demons for at least a year, and it would be much easier to deal with them if they weren’t bitter for not even being considered), but she was fairly sure she wanted to teach the Deers. (Maybe if she had more patience to deal with the other two house heads. Maybe if Dimitri was a little less… earnest, let’s say. If Edelgard didn’t seem to evaluate her every word and action under a microscope, she would have gone with either of them.

But the thing she had realised - something that took who knows how many years, two tries at infancy, two at the torture that was puberty, and becoming an _assassin_ \- was that, at the end of the day a person is defined by their choices, and she didn’t have to like _everyone_. Some people would rub her the wrong way and it was a fact of life, which was what made the choice of the Golden Deers so much easier.)

She was aware that there was a high chance that the schemer was probably planning to use her, and frankly that was a smart thing to do. (Use every resource when you have the chance, lest someone else do it for you. On the one hand, she was slightly annoyed to be said resource, on the other hand you really had to respect that kind of pragmatism.) Holding her hand out, he looked a little surprised before taking it. She shook it resolutely, before putting a finger quietly to her lips.

“Pleasure doing business with you,” Claude said with a smirk, understanding what she was implying from the wordless gesture. 

It took a little while to make rounds introducing herself as the daughter of the returned Knight of Seiros, Jeralt. A few students had expressed hope that she would join their class, as a student mind you. Saying, a student with such a respected warrior as a father, could only have an equally deadly warrior for a child (implying that if she hadn’t been, it would have been a shame on his bloodline, and wasn’t that just a lovely kick in the gut? It _always_ had to circle back to bloodlines didn’t it?) and such a child would be an amazing addition to their house.

(Byleth had always had a bit of a baby face, even in memories that were slowly beginning to fade despite the vice grip she tried to hold on them. She always appeared younger than she really was, and it helped her out. Everyone glossed over her, assuming she was another child of some noble or warrior or other. They were surrounded by the heirs of Fódlan and its Crested families. In their eyes, what was another kid with a fancy background?)

It made the trek quite interesting. Watching quietly from alcoves as Hilda convinced some poor schmuck to carry supplies for her. Watching in annoyance as Lorenz failed to catch the attention of yet another girl before deciding aloud that he would just try again the following day (she was going to have to train that out of him, immediately). Watched as Ignatz gave devoted prayers and Marianne held onto her faith and tried to stand despite the visceral fear that she was inconveniencing _everyone_.

(Eventually, the decision felt less like a choice and more like something that was set in stone. She was Byleth, once someone else, her father was now Jeralt, oh, and she was going to teach the Golden Deers.)

She returned to Rhea with barely a second thought after a brief talk with the other house leaders. Barely, since a few students from the other houses had caught her eye (sharp tongued Felix, savvy Dorothea and anxious Bernadetta). Along the way, she’d met Rhea’s dedicated servant, a young Almyran boy maybe just entering his teens called Cyril who took his duties maybe a little too seriously.

Before walking into the audience chamber again, she made her way to her father who had holed himself up in the captain’s office and was rifling through files and mission requests. Shutting the door behind her, she took a seat on a chair across the table from him.

“Here I am again, the office of the Knight Captain…” he grumbled, dropping the papers back onto the desk “That being said, I’m merely here to ‘assist’. Apparently the current captain is getting on in years, and is having trouble keeping up with the responsibilities of the job.”

“So they gave you the job in all but name?” Byleth asked “You’re not naive enough to accept a job like that.”

“I can’t exactly leave, Rhea knows I’m alive now and will have knights on the lookout. I got away with it last time because of extraneous circumstances, but I doubt she'll just let me go now that she has me in her hands. And those knights of hers are everywhere,” he replied, shrugging. Continuing on, he tried to soothe her worries, saying: “Besides, at what she’s paying, I’m not too mad, more wary.”

Byleth leaned forward. “How much we talking?” he told her and she let out a low whistle that resounded throughout the room. “Will I get paid that much?”

“Probably not right away, but you can definitely work up to it if your students show promise,” he replied, “Speaking of students, have you picked a house?”

“Golden Deers.”

“That’s the one with the Reigan heir as a leader, isn’t it?” Jeralt inquired, to which she nodded. “He seems like a schemer, so you’ll probably get along like a house on fire, or _set_ each other on fire.”

Byleth couldn’t decide if she wanted to be offended that he would insinuate she was a schemer or relieved that her father knew her so well. She plainly told him as such, receiving a laugh in turn. The kind she hadn’t heard since long before the bandit incident at Remire where their lives had devolved so quickly due to Rhea and her unknowable plans.

“Promise me something?” he started

“Anything.” (Byleth didn’t hesitate. Not a thought went through her mind about maybies, or saying no. Of course there wasn’t. Jeralt meant everything to her, and vice versa. The only person who had her trust and loyalty).

“Keep your guard up.”

“Always.”

Eventually, she left what was essentially her father’s new office and made her way to said Archbishop. Seteth thanked her for saving the students as she passed him by, frankly stating that despite this he didn’t trust her right after. Alois grinned at the sight of her, saying “You must have been surprised at my recommendation, ey?”

‘I want to murder you,’ she said bluntly in her mind, before replying “I certainly didn’t expect it.”

He proceeded to douse her with compliments, telling her that it was the least he could do for _Captain_ Jeralt’s daughter. Waving goodbye with a bright expression, he jogged off to his post or to file a report on the incident that had brought them together, it could be either, she wasn’t particularly paying attention.

Soon the Archbishop came out of the advisor’s room and they were joined by Seteth, Manuela and Hanneman. “I hope you have found our halls brimming with the vitality of well-intentioned souls,” Rhea said, taking on what was quickly becoming her usual pose of collected, yet delicate poise. Her voice coming out in a soft rhythm, every word perfectly pronounced and intonated. "Moreover, I hope you were able to decide which house you’d like to take charge of.”

Pointing at the other two professors with them, Rhea explained “Professors Hanneman and Manuela were gracious enough to let you take the first choice, a sort of gift to welcome you to the faculty.”

Seteth, much like earlier, made a valid argument about distrusting someone with as little of a trackable work history as Byleth but his worries were quickly swept under the rug by Rhea’s calm countenance and sickly sweet words. When she was asked which house she had decided upon, the words ‘Golden Deer’ passed through her lips with ease as she remembered the students. “So you have decided on the Golden Deers, led by Claude, correct?” Rhea asked, which Byleth affirmed, not someone to second guess choices.

“Your heart has made its choice, then. All I ask is that you guide these open minds with virtue, care and sincerity,” the woman beseeched. Had she been anyone else - not Byleth, daughter of Jeralt who had left his entire life behind because of this woman’s machinations, whatever they may have been -, Byleth might have been encouraged by her words. But she wasn’t anyone else, and Rhea’s words crawled over her skin like ants and made her miss Seteth’s following words.

When she returned to reality, a small girl with similar hair to Rhea but the facial structure of Seteth had joined them. “Brother?” she had called him, before profusely apologising “Oh! I am so sincerely sorry! I did not mean to interrupt.”

“I’m in the middle of something, Flayn,” he scolded lightly, “Is it urgent?”

Flayn shook her head, dissuading his worries before noticing Byleth. “Who’s this?” she asked her brother.

“This is our newest professor at the academy.”

With a bright smile and an exuberant aura, the girl cheered “Oh my! A new addition to the Officers Academy! I am so very pleased to meet you, Professor. I am Flayn, Seteth’s little sister. I am so happy to make your acquaintance.”

(So much like the little sister she would never see again. Small and innocent, unaware of the brutality in the world around her. It had been Byleth’s job to protect her. To slowly introduce her to a world that would eat her alive the first chance it gone. But Byleth was gone from her life now, so who would do it now? Mayhaps it would be their mother, who had tried to teach Byleth but was not aware of the new dangers of her children’s era. Their father? Hilarious, the man - for all that he had taught them kindness and charity - wasn’t good at much outside of his job, even though he so desperately tried to be. _Had_ tried to be.

Byleth hated to speak that way. She _had_ a sister. She _had_ her old parents. She spoke as if they were dead. The worst part was knowing that, the truth was, _she_ was dead. Or rather, the one who had _died_ . Who had left _them_ . How pathetic of her to mourn _them_.)

With all the emotional tact she could muster (having lost most of it somewhere in the shift between bodies and an innate _need_ to cling onto the more blunt nature of her past), Byleth nodded, bowed, and said “My name is Byleth, it is lovely to meet you as well.” It didn’t seem to go over well, her voice empty and cold despite her words. Seteth watched her disapprovingly even though Flayn’s smile widened a little.

Seemingly vindictive for some unseen slight, Seteth explained the coming inter-house mock battle intended to gauge the current progress of the students. He explained it was an opportunity to ascertain her skill level, but Byleth had the feeling that anything other than a brutal victory on the Golden Deers part would be used to question her abilities and while Byleth hated having to prove herself over and over to people who didn’t want to accept her, she hated being considered incompetent even more. 

(Once, she had even looked her father dead in the eye after he had asked “Why are you like this? Please be more careful.” His words imploring despite his calm facade.

She had easily replied, “I _was_ careful, but no amount of carefulness will protect me from my own spite.” To which he gave an exasperated sigh, as if expecting that kind of answer from her. In retrospect, he likely had been expecting it. She truly _had been_ a difficult child.)

With that information passed onto her, the meeting was concluded and she was sent to her new house’s common room. Entering the courtyard, she saw Claude was still standing there despite the hours passing by. He raised an eyebrow expectantly. She nodded in turn. With a rakish grin, he let out a whistle and gestured for the Deers to gather in the common room as Byleth entered with them.

While everyone else went toward seats, Byleth walked straight to the front desk. Claude joined her, introducing her as their new common room professor and the teacher in charge of most of their education frankly.

“Wait, _what_?” she heard Hilda exclaim from the second row beside Marianne “Are you really our new professor, I just thought you were another student?!”

“Is that true? You aren’t quite what I had pictured…” Ignatz mumbled from the front row, only to realise he was a little too loud. He quickly sputtered out apologies but Byleth waved him off, explaining that had been the whole point of her brief deception. Recalling her own days as a student, she explained, “Students very rarely show their true colours around their own teachers. Sometimes they’ll display their nature around a temporary substitute, but they always do around other students. You were the ones who assumed I was a student to be and I didn’t correct you. And that will be the first thing I’m going to train out of you.”

“Making assumptions?” Lysithea asked, her face scrunched up in confusion.

“Exactly,” Byleth said, leaning against her desk “A wise person once said ‘Assuming makes an ass of you and me’. They were right. Assumptions are usually baseless and if not that, then based on stereotypes. You’re training to be warriors. You need to make tactical decisions in a matter of seconds, it’s the difference between keeping your battalion together and alive or apart and dead. I’ll be teaching you to deduce, but we have time so you can get that vaguely horrified look off your face.”

Claude looked at her from beside her desk, “And here I had assumed you chose the class to get to know me better.” Byleth looked at him. Somehow her impassive expression was still able to convey disappointment as she asked “What did I literally just say?”

His grin turned sheepish as he commented, “Now that you’re our professor, maybe I should choose my words more carefully.”

Byleth shrugged “Your choice, I’m twenty, and according to what I’ve learnt your not far off.”

“Well then, since we’re pretty close in age and all, I suppose formalities aren’t all that necessary,” Claude corrected himself. From his seat, Lorenz piped up about how unusual her appointment was considering how she was basically the same age as some other students in the Academy (namely Hubert of the Black Eagles). He went on to express some discomfort at her new position. Nodding, Byleth said “Reasonable, I’m not officially trained like you are being now. I learnt mostly on the battlefield.”

“When’s your birthday professor?” Hilda asked

“21st day of the Harpstring Moon,” Byleth replied easily.

“Wow! That’s not too far away!” one unnamed girl in the back of the class. Raphael offered a contest to compare the size of their biceps, saying he likely carried more muscle, but was quickly deterred by Ignatz reminding him that she had been recommended by Alois. Shaking her head, Byleth said “I’m more of an assassin, he likely does have more muscle than me.”

Raphael seemed ecstatic by the idea.

Claude pulled them back on track, reminding them of her skill and her parentage. Leonie, the ginger who said she was her father’s apprentice at some point or another, agreed with Claude’s views. Lysithea asked who the captain was, sending half the class clamouring to explain _Jeralt the Blade Breaker_ (the guy who once, literally, threw her into a lake when she came back from a job covered in blood and refused to let her sleep until she got it all off.

“It’s unhygenic!” he had yelled as she broke the surface with a glare when all she really wanted a nap).

Byleth tried to explain that he really wasn’t that very otherworldly, only for Leonie to bite back that he was worth nothing but respect. Closing her eyes for a second, she sighed. Accepting this was just going to be something she sidestepped. 

Lysithea said something about having high hopes for Byleth’s teaching considering her father when Hilda, the saint that she was, said “Just because someone is special doesn’t mean their children are special too, Lysithea. Assuming that a child will be exceptional just because of their lineage is a _bad_ idea.” The pink haired girl gesticulated with her hands wildly, attempting to get her point across concisely.

Point at her, Byleth asked “Hilda, right?”

“Uhhh, yes? Am I in trouble?”

“Nope,” Byleth answered, popping the ‘p’ “I just want you to know you’re my new favourite.”

The class broke out into cacophonous whispers as Hilda said “Wow, I didn’t even have to do anything.” and Claude shook his head in a facade of dismay.

“Teach, I thought _I_ was your favourite,” he mourned fakely. Rolling her eyes, she slammed her hand on her new desk. Quickly catching their attention as the talking immediately died down again. “Relax,” Byleth instructed, “The position is negotiable.”

“What do we get if we’re your favourite?” Claude inquired

“My temporary respect and the benefit of the doubt if you forget homework,” she told them, crossing her arms and leaning back against the desk once more. Looking at Hilda, she advised “And I’ve heard about your tendency to procrastinate and put in as little effort as possible, Hildegard, so I suggest you try to keep the title.”

“Hildegard?” Hilda repeated, the nickname sounding like a question.

“ _Hildegard_ ,” Byleth reiterated in confirmation. "Annoy me, and it's your new name." (In reference to her past, she would have gone for Patricia but it would have been so very lost on her students. At least with Hildegard, they all had a little fun.)

Hilda groaned, dropping her head onto the desk. “Great,” she muttered into the desk.

“Any other questions, before I send you off to rub my presence here in the face of the other houses?” Byleth asked the congregated students “And don’t act like you won’t, I’m not naive.” Everyone began to speak in a pandemonic noise. Looking at Claude, she said “You didn’t mention the fact that they do this.”

“Sorry Teach. Didn’t I tell you we’re a rowdy bunch?” He had a contrite look on his face that she so desperately wanted to call him out on.

“No, you didn’t,” she chose to say instead "In fact, I distinctly recall you saying you weren't as difficult as the other two houses."

“Well, you’ll find nobles _and_ commoners here. Those who are dedicated to their studies alongside slackers,” he warned “But hey, I really hope you’re looking forward to the year ahead as much as I am.” With a sigh, she nodded simply because this mad house really was the best class for her. Not too strict or set in their ways.

“They all know about the inter-house mock battle, right?” she asked, once she received Claude’s verification she told the students “I have less than a week to figure out how to turn you mad children into a functional strike team. Kindly, _get out_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was a bit of a difficult chapter to write some reason?? But I completed it in the end. You get to see a bit more of Byleth's melancholy in this, the true results of what transmigrating meant to her as well. Probably the longest chapter to date, as well. Hope you enjoy ^v^
> 
> ~~The negotiable favouritism is a reference to another fic of mine, Erinyes~~


	5. Of Crests and Battle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Byleth tries to deal with the fact that she has a Crest now, by ignoring the problem, and tries to keep the job she doesn't want.

It was somewhere between dying for the second time and the mock battle that Bylet realised, the universe hated her. Because making her suffer through death, the inescapable feeling of not just vulnerability but the inevitability of life, _once_ was bad enough. Twice? More than a little cruel.

Making her work for the Church? Bit much.

But the audacity, the  _ gall  _ of giving her a Crest? That was just  _ rude _ .

Ugh.

A week ago the world had made sense (as much as a world of magic can make sense for a soul that had first been born in a world, where science was the norm and magic was simply a pipedream). When she found out about her mysterious unobserved crest, she had hunkered down in Jeralt’s office. She had all but run out of Hanneman’s office when he turned his back on her. Byleth was her name, Avoidance was her game. 

So under her father's watchful eye she drowned herself in her new workload. Sifting through papers and exams, she set to work making paper spreadsheets of where students were making mistakes on past tests, where silly mistakes could have been easily avoided had it not been for wording. Slowly but surely, pulling her hair out and breaking her back hunched over the table as she had been.

(She remembered games that challenged students in her memories. A rendition of kahoot was possible, but then again that destroyed relationships. As the next leading nobles of the Leicester Alliance, that was too risky of a game to play. Perhaps Hot Seat, she pondered over her lunch with her father, munching numbly on a chicken as she thought.)

“Hey, Teach!” Claude greeted as he and Hilda dropped down to sit with them. She hummed around the chicken in acknowledgement. “Is she alive?” she heard Hilda ask her father, who merely shrugged in turn, pointing at the waif-like Byleth who seemed dazed and lost in another reality (‘If only she knew,’ Byleth thought).

“It’s early morning and I don’t think she’s slept in days,” he informed them, getting winces from Claude and Hilda. They continued to talk above her head as she continued to eat and unfurled the map she had been given by Seteth of the upcoming battle ground, getting chicken grease on the parchment. 

“Got any plans for the battle, Teach?” Claude asked between mouthfuls and Byleth shrugged. She informed him that the field was large and since she wasn’t informed of their starting position, anything she came up with would have to be loose enough that it could be changed on the fly. For the most part Raphael and Lorenz would likely serve as damage takers to allow their more damage heavy attackers to attack unhindered.

(‘‘Serve to evaluate your teaching abilities’ my ass,’ Byleth thought, ‘I haven’t had the chance to teach them a damn thing yet.’ Grumbling at Rhea’s willful decision to make her a teacher, and Seteth’s willful response to Rhea’s actions. But of course, he was too loyal to Rhea to be mad at her for long. So he would take it out on Byleth. What  _ joy _ .)

Turning to the two Golden Deers with her, she told them “Enjoy your break while you can, it’s the last one you're getting for a while.”

“Why did I just get a shiver down my spine,” Hilda whined, leaning away from her teacher. Jeralt chuckled, finishing off his plate. “If Byleth teaches you anything like I taught her, she is going to destroy you.”

“I would  _ never _ ,” she said impassively, lying through her teeth (you know, like a liar). Swapping the map for her monthly calendar and marking dates for lectures according to the syllabus she had on her lap. “What’s that?” Hilda asked pointing at the thick book.

“The  _ syllabus _ , Hilda” she informed

“We have a syllabus?”

“ _ Hildegard,”  _ Byleth said, for once, a small amount of sarcastic dismay dripping into her tone.

“So, about the mock battle that’s coming up professor… you don’t mind me sitting out, do you?” Hilda inquired with an innocent look on her face once some time had gone by. Byleth couldn’t help but think of it as a lackluster imitation of Rhea’s pose. “As a fragile maiden, I’m useless in battle, you see,” the student tried to explain, from the corner of her eye Byleth could see Claude watching on in silence. His smile just get larger as time got on, hiding it behind a hand after a point. “I’ll just… cheer everyone on instead!”

Byleth nodded a few times, Hilda growing seemingly excited at the possibility that she might have pulled one over their new teacher before classes had even begun. Opening her mouth, Byleth dashed her hopes by immediately saying “No.” She quickly slapped Claude on the back as he began to choke on his laughter and food having foreseen the situation, instructing him to be more careful as she stood up to take her leave with Jeralt.

For the most part, her students seemed like darlings despite butting heads on nearly everything, so training them could go either way. (She wasn’t silly enough to think it’d be a walk in the park. She remembered her teachers from high school, somehow pushing insane hours to make sure they got content, freeing up their already short lunch hours to help them. They were the only reason she passed. She wanted to be that for the Golden Deers.)

Leaving the dining hall found her with Seteth who had set her up in quarters next to the students’. Saying it was to better supervise them and remembering what she and old friends had gotten up to, so long ago, she could understand why. ‘Commoner’ students resided on the first floor, while the second was primarily for students of noble birth. When her face twitched in contempt, a wry grin grew on his face. “As a rule we try to avoid discrimination based on social status here,” he told her, “But the nobility can be quite…  _ insistent  _ when it comes to matters of propriety.”

“Ah,” Byleth hummed, “So… nonsense?”

Seteth gave her a look, somewhere between disapproval and disappointment (and why would he be disappointed? It was the  _ truth _ . The intrinsic belief of Fodlan’s nobility that they were better than just about everyone else, supported by the crest system that maintained their status with the weight of the ‘Goddess’ and the actions of their ancestors, meant that they were allowed to have hissy fits when they had to  _ breathe  _ the same air as commoners. Did that make you uncomfortable? It definitely made Byleth uncomfortable). “It would be best for you to avoid inappropriate conduct professor. Like  _ that. _ I expect you to set a good example for the students.” he warned with a glare, before walking off. “Tall order,” Byleth whispered before walking back into her room. Curtains drawn, shielded from the light. 

Without realising, the days passed by her. Suns rising and falling as she worked without her notice. By the time the battle came around, she had bags under her eyes and an almost perfect memory of how the field was shaped along with a vague idea of how to counter assaults (however her nonstop work ethic had the unintended result of the entire student body thinking she was a myth and wasn’t that lovely? Fact of the matter was, with her new job, Byleth had accepted her new workload with a touch of poise before it came at her like a rockslide. For the Goddess had cursed her for her hubris, and her work was never finished. Byleth was never going to be a good example for those kids, merely a terrible warning).

She spent the first morning reacquainting herself with humanity, drilling basic formations into her students and reminding them to back out if things started to look rash. Ironically, the day of the mock battle coincided with Ferdinand’s birthday so as she passed a bouquet of flowers to him in the preparation hall with good tidings for his birthday, the petty part of her demanded she say: “And my condolences for your upcoming loss.” Her nearby Fawns snorted and snickered at his face, even members of the other two houses giggling along.

At the entrance, she and Claude stood together watching the easygoing Deers. “So how are we going to go about this?” he asked her, “You’ll be our commander, that much is sure.”

“Just don’t screw up and everything will be fine,” she replied, leaning against the door that led to the field. “No pressure or anything, I mean it’s not like my job isn’t relying on you winning.”

“Right, right, I’ll do whatever I can to help,” he waved off “I mean… I’m kind of obligated to.” A light came into his eyes as he continued to talk nonchalantly. Lightly implying a little scheme, possibly including laxatives. “Don’t even think about it,” she warned him, but gave him a discreet thumbs up.

“Yeah, yeah. Wink, wink, I read you, can’t really condone that kinda thing,” he continued “But say, hypothetically speaking, students from the other houses started racing to the infirmary… As far as anyone knows it could just be a harmless little stomach bug making its rounds.” He explained, just as Dimitri and Edelgard decided to walk up to them.

“No,” she empathised, throwing her eyes in the direction of the approaching house leaders. Catching her drift, he corrected himself with practiced ease.

“Well, well,” Edelgard drawled “What a fascinating conversation you two are having. May we join?”

When Dimitri scolded him, Claude misdirected him with the threat of an even more convoluted and obscure scheme. Edelgard somehow shrugged in such a way that even  _ that  _ seemed ladylike, telling them that it didn’t matter and to prepare for a crushing defeat. Something Byleth should have expected in retaliation for her stunt with Ferdinand, but Edelgard’s words just didn’t have the same  _ Oomph _ as Byleth’s.

“You heard ‘em teach,” Claude said, “We can’t let these fine folks down.”

“If they insist,” she replied.

Manuela, Hanneman and her father joined them moments later, the former teasing her: “Awww, how  _ precious _ ,” she cooed “Looks like you and the students are becoming fast friends!”

“Try not to murder anyone, Byl,” her father groused when he noticed Byleth’s tightening fists.

“Is that so likely?” Dimitri asked, his eyes widening in shock. 

Jeralt shook his head, “It’s all but second nature for me to warn her at this point.”

With that, their minds shifted into high gear, shown by the way that the tired Hilda picked up an axe just over half her size. Noting the opposing Eagles and Lions taking part, Byleth swapped Raphael for Marianne at the last second. They waited to step onto the field with bated breath for Jeralt to start the battle from a hill overlooking the field, with Rhea, Seteth and Flayn standing behind him. With the Black Eagles going off to the far left supported by Manuela, the Blue Lions supported by Hanneman went to the right, Byleth continued to plan as they waited to enter the stage from the south. 

“I’m sure you already understand, but the house that defeats the other two is declared the winner,” he declared. So it was essentially last man standing but vaguely lethal. Thus, the battle began.

While the Deers inched forward, Ferdinand bolted forward toward them (she knew that petty comment would come back to bite her but never so soon) to Edelgard’s consternation. The Blue lions were a little more cohesive, as Ashe came closer, likely to lure them in for the axe wielding Dedue and Mercedes. “How adorable,” she noted aloud, “Like a rabbit.”

“Why don’t we introduce them to a keg of explosive powder, Teach?” Claude asked from beside her, notching an arrow (it was at that point that she realised her father was right. She absolutely  _ would _ get along with Claude like a house on fire, seemingly kindred spirits). With a hand gesture, she directed Claud to stake out on the edge of the small forest, and make a curved shot around Ferdinand to hit Ashe (two lethal shots to the chest should do the job but Claude wasn’t fast enough for that just yet, she’ll fix it soon enough. The arrows heads had been replaced with small powder bags, not fatal but they would definitely hurt). 

Byleth herself engaged Ferdinand, weakening him for Marianne’s Nosferatu as the Faith user snuck out from behind Byleth with a non-direct shot at her new professor’s insistence. One down, nine to go.

With Ferdinand out of the picture, Lorenz had a direct route to Ashe. The grey haired archer, weakened from Claude’s initial attack and incapable of making one of his own at so short of a range, went down with a quick use of the Tempest Lance technique (it was surprising for such a youth to be able to wield such a demanding technique, but not uncommon. ‘Consider teaching them less weapon damaging techniques in future’ Byleth noted).

From behind a fence of sticks, Edelgard praised, “You are performing as expected, professor. We will have to face you with our full might,”

“Firstly, flattery will get you nowhere,” Byleth called out to her, “Secondly, I can’t help but be a little offended that you haven’t been using your full might. And you said you wanted me as a teacher _. _ ” It was at that point, Byleth realised, Manuela and Hanneman weren’t actively participating, making her a little suspicious as to what they were planning. Not long ago, they had been making idle threats about winning the battle. Yet now they weren’t saying a word? Something was up.

In her distraction, Hubert stalked forward and hit Hilda with a miasma attack. Marianne immediately went around and healed the girl, who immediately went forth for revenge. Hefting her axe up, she slammed it into him with a ferocity Byleth hadn’t expected from her. Her attack left a sizeable dent, nearly a crater in the ground and caused dirt and dust to fly everywhere. With the dark mage blinded, Byleth surged forward and struck him down. Dropping their opponent count, down to seven.

Reeling from the loss of two teammates, Edelgard and Dorothea retreated towards Manuela. Dimitri did the exact opposite, rushing forward to meet them with Dedue and Mercedes at his back. “Thank you for making this so much easier!” Hilda said, running closer as she chugged down a vulnerary. With Hilda just out of their attack range, Mercedes and Dedue focused on the professor and the Gloucester heir who were much more of an immediate threat, leaving Dimitri open.

Sneaking closer, Claude called out, “Psst, Your princeliness. You’ve got a thing for Edelgard, right? Come  _ on _ , fess up. You’ll feel better,” he all but sang the teasing words but Dimitri didn’t even seem phased, opting to chastise him. Grumbling, Claude aimed an arrow at the prince.

Invoking his crest, Claude clipped the prince’s wielding arm as he went by to attack Lorenz. Dedue attacked Claude, locking the duke’s heir in place between himself and the prince. While Byleth was keeping an eye on her students’ wounds Mercedes shot her in the arm.

Things started getting difficult, of course, because  _ suddenly  _ Manuela decided to join in! ‘Because of course she did,’ Byleth thought while Hilda got between Mercedes and her teacher and critically slammed her axe into the girl who shot Byleth, instantly taking her out of the running. “ _ Sorry!  _ Did I hurt you?” Hilda apologised as Mercedes got out of the field, likely feeling a little bad because she wasn’t enraged like with Hubert.

“I knew you had it in you,” Byleth told Hilda from behind her.

Without waiting for Marianne to heal him, Lorenz attacked Dedue which left him open to a decisive strike from Dimitri. One that she quickly took care of by eliminating the prince with a critical blow to his chest (He was very lucky that the blades were blunted, all the students were. Inwardly, she cringed at the concept of the mock battle but could understand the purpose behind it. Besides, it wasn’t exactly her place to condemn it).

With more than half the Blue Lions dispatched and one less of the Black Eagles, the Golden Deers were in the lead. But with all battles it could easily change in a split second, as Edelgard and Dorothea began to move forward from their retreat with Manuela behind them as a healer. Marianne had enough energy for  _ maybe  _ three healing spells if she pushed herself. Lorenz would probably be screwed if Dedue’s strike landed, but with superior speed and a Tempest Lance under his belt, Byleth had to trust him.

With a slight nod of her head, Lorenz struck first and took his opponent out. Meaning only Hanneman, who hadn’t moved from the start of the battle was left from the Blue Lions. Hilda ran into the forest dragging her axe behind, followed by Claude who threw a scathing remark at Edelgard. “Look at that! A real-life princess! I’ll have to be careful not to scar that little face of yours.”

Said princess grew visibly anger as she seethed “Careful Claude. I’ll win no matter what, but you’re only making things harder for yourself.”

With a scoff, Claude replied, “Losing hasn’t even crossed your mind has it? Ooh, this’ll be a shock for you, then.” He made another curved shot with ease. To distract the remaining Black Eagles from Hilda, who waited within the cloaking trees, and, the also weakened, Claude, Byleth stepped closer and snagged Edelgard’s attention. In the meantime, Marianne healed Lorenz from behind the advancing trio.

Byleth dodged an attack from Edelgard, who stopped her from protecting Hilda from the two magic users who used a pincer attack to force her to retreat. Going in for a finishing double strike against Edelgard, Byleth yelled at the two students to retreat, Claude was a bit more belligerent than the easily acquiescing Hilda but both did as they were told. More prepared to take damage, Lorenz stepped forward to block attacks from Hilda who was still unfortunately in range. Regardless, the two remaining Black Eagles threw spells at the girl around the lancer.

Dodging an arc of lightning from Dorothea, Claude went at her with an axe of his own breaking her guard for Lorenz to finish her off. With that, there were only two enemies left on the battlefield. Manuela, who could be taken down with a double slice from Byleth, and Hanneman who stood on a healing rune. That would be harder to deal with.

Giving her victorious opponent a vulnerary, Manuela left the field with grace. With that, there were still five Golden Deers left on the battleground, against Hanneman who did the wise thing and stayed on his healing rune (Byleth couldn’t remember the number of magic users who thought it was a good idea leaving the vague safety of their rune. Vague safety was always better than zero safety).

Little by little, the five of them slowly began to circle around Hanneman. Byleth could easily take the victory but decided to nod at the two other females on her group. (Hilda seemed to need a reason to fight. Mayhaps a victory of her own could get her to take her studies seriously. Pride could be a great motivator, but Byleth would have to keep an eye on said pride to make sure it didn’t become vanity. Marianne, on the other hand, needed to see she was an important member of the team. Despite her win against Ferdinand, the girl was still hesitant to step forward when needed and that could have dangerous consequences in an actual battle. Maybe having a hand in the final fight, outside of healing, would do her some good). Besides, Byleth could easily step in when needed.

Unfortunately, Marianne’s Nosferatu wasn’t strong enough to finish off Hanneman and with Hilda so close to him, already injured by a Nosferatu, she likely wouldn’t survive another hit. Thus, Byleth ran up the steps of the ruins that Hanneman had made his stand and easily finished him off.

“All right!” Jeralt yelled from his stand as proctor “The winner of this mock battle is… The Golden Deers.”

A grin broke out on Hilda’s face as she cheered, pulling Marianne into a tight hug despite the axe wielder’s bruises and cuts. Claude made his way over past Lorenz and slapped her back in comradery. “Great work, everyone,” the woman informed her students “Even if it’s just a mock battle, the taste of victory is amazing as ever.”

“Am I-” Hilda began, pausing with a massive smile “Yeah,  _ yeah I am _ . I’m awesome!”

Lorenz had a smug smile, back straight with vindictive pride as they made their way back to their house’s common room to meet with their other classmates.

“That was a brilliant win,” Claude charmed as he and Byleth walked at the back of the group of students. Hilda’s excited chattering becoming white noise as he spoke. 

“Everyone did beautifully, did you see that Nosferatu Marianne threw at Ferdinand? That was an amazing way to start the battle, it really set the tone.” Byleth said, purposely loud enough for Marianne to hear. The girl’s ears going red as she continued to face forward.

“Playing ignorant as to the quality of your command and deflecting the praise to your students?” Claude hummed “You really are the model professor, Teach.” His words reminded Byleth of the teachers who had dedicated so much to their students for mediocre pay and she so desperately wanted to correct him.

“To be honest,” he said, catching her attention again “I had a bunch of other schemes planned as well, just in case the situation called for it.”

“What? Didn’t trust your teacher?” she asked wryly.

“ _ Woah _ , I wouldn’t say  _ that _ ,” he laughed in turn as they entered their class. Lorenz immediately praised her (it was blatantly a roundabout apology for distrusting her the day they met but she let him have it. It was easier than making a comment, and such a comment would likely have lasting consequences. Frankly, it’d be easier to slowly change his mind by systematically proving him wrong). 

Raphael cheered as he said, “They just did what you told them, and you not only won, you won without losing anyone! I loved that fight! It got me so pumped!”

Lysithea thanked her for the learning opportunity, having taken notes throughout the fight as she watched from the sidelines. Hilda punched a fist into the air, wincing a little from the bruise she had sustained on her side, as she said: “I never doubted our professor would be amazing! It was  _ way _ too obvious. Don’t you agree, Marianne?”

After a little stutter, said Faith mage agreed, “Well done, Professor,” she said, her voice meek in the crowd of students. “And to you, Marianne,” Byleth returned.

“That goes for you too, Lorenz, Hilda, Claude,” she added “You did beautifully, thank you for putting your faith in my instructions. As for the rest of you, I hope you learnt something from what you saw?”

The students nodded in confirmation, saying they hadn’t been able to take their eyes off the fight for even a second as one by one their opponents were taken out but none of their classmates were. “A mercenary’s wisdom and techniques are forged in battle. Those are the sorts of things you can only learn through experience. Right, Teach?”

“Exactly,” she affirmed “That’s why I plan to set up an inter house mock battle again one of these days in preparation for the Battle of Eagle and Lion. Not a three sided match but hopefully, you’ll all be a lot more prepared for that by the time it comes.”

At that the class groaned in unison

“It means you’ll be able to crush the other two houses at the famed Battle,” she hummed, “Where our house doesn’t even have the honour of being in the title.”

They immediately changed their tune.

A laugh escaped Claude as he said “More importantly, it’s time to  _ celebrate _ ! Teach here has yet to try my well renowned home cooking.”

“I’ll probably like it very much,” she told him. When he puffed up in pride, she couldn’t help but continue on. “I grew up around old drunkards who could barely make a stew,” she informed him dryly “I have low standards.”

“At least you’re self aware,” he sighed in consternation, as they all travelled like a pack to the dining hall. “It will be even better than normal, since I swiped some finely aged cheese from the dining hall for just this occasion.”

(She had to wave off the concerns of the head chef, giving her word that the hall and kitchens would be spotless by the time they left later that night. She didn’t cackle as Claude tried to wash the plates, smashing them to the rage of Leonie. But it was damn near close).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Beta's comments as they edited:
> 
> \- "No, she said. Yknow, like a liar"  
> \- You could have just said Byleth was lying in one single way, but instead you chose to say it in three different ways and the redundancy is great  
> \- You know I'm sleep deprived when Princess Welding Arm is making me laugh  
> \- Awwww, Hilda you _are_ awesome  
> \- So the Knights of Seiros and the Officers Academy are the 'Are they/Aren't they?' couple of every group of friends?  
> \- How did you fit so many references into this chapter  
> \- Your making less You're/your mistakes with every chapter. Yknow what this is? _Growth_  
>  \- Man, I bet you Jeralt is really smug as he announces the winners  
> \- The Golden Deers are Byleth's Golden Dears.


	6. Last Day of Freedom

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Byleth is too tired for this beaurocratic BS and she wants to eat, but at least her dad's around.
> 
> also trigger warning: there's a mention of vomit and an assassination. Nothing graphic, but better to be safe than sorry.

On the first day of the Harpstring moon, before she even had the chance to numbly munch on a sandwich, or “have breakfast” as everyone else referred to it, Byleth was called up to Rhea’s audience chamber. (As long as she could remember, Byleth had never been a morning person. Gaining some energy toward the middle of the day, hours after everyone else, and gaining most of her energy as midnight drew closer. But the closer it got to dawn, Byleth would shuffle along like a wraith as the sun came up)

“Your work with the students was remarkable, I can see Jeralt trained you well,” the archbishop praised as they discussed the past battle, seemingly unbothered by Byleth’s dead eyes and exhausted appearance. “I do hope you were able to use the opportunity to bond with the students?”

“Of course,” Byleth rasped.

“I am so happy to hear that, Nothing would please me more than if you used this coming year to grow closer still,” Rhea cheered, ignoring the wary eyes Seteth was giving the new professor. The man seemed a mix of horrified and worried for the professor before him. Likely undecided because of his distrust of the assassin - which was completely fair, she was an  _ assassin  _ \- and the seemingly innate compassion she had seen when he interacted with his sister.

“Of course, the mock battle was merely a precursor to the real battle,” the advisor interjected smoothly, “The real fight is the Battle of the Eagle and Lion, that will take place during the Wyvern Moon.”

“I’m aware,” she informed him, explaining that she had gotten all the monthly calendars in advance to preplan lectures and book the training grounds during lesson hours. “Speaking of, I was wondering if possible battles between the classes were acceptable in the meantime. Nothing to the scale of the one we just had, but one house against one house?”

Crossing his arms, Seteth thought about it momentarily. Likely running the numbers of something like that, how many hours out of class would be taken out due not only to the battle but healing any wounds. Eventually, he relented and allowed it as long as the grounds were booked for the appropriate time in addition to Manuela and Hanneman agreeing.

“As for today,” Rhea began, taking leadership once more “I have called you here to tell you of our mission for the month ahead. Your class is to dispose of some bandits causing trouble nearby.”

Having already been made aware of the monthly mission system thanks to her father, Byleth nodded. “Those affiliated with the Garreg Mach Monastery have a moral obligation to help those in need, regardless of social standing,” Seteth explained.

“Everyone should have a moral obligation to do that,” she countered “Regardless of affiliation.”

“In a perfect world, yes,” he agreed, “You’ll need to complete it before the end of the month. Understood?”

“Sir, yes sir,” she answered, she saluted impassively.

Eyeing the wan-faced professor, Seteth said “I will provide you with the necessary details for your first mission. If I told you now, I expect you would only forget.”

“Likely,” she agreed. With that she was dismissed and, with great relish, Byleth left the hall with Sothis whispering in her mind.

“Bandits, they say...” she hummed. As usual, Byleth twitched at the disembodied voice, to Sothis’ amusement. “You ought to know that I am always with you now. To hear my voice should not surprise you. Do you recall when we first met?” she taunted, “You shall not fall so shamelessly again, correct?”

“One cannot control the hands of fate,” Byleth thought back. “I will try my best, of course.”

“Well, I cannot expect much more than that…” Sothis replied just as Byleth made the turn into the dining hall to sit with her father, who had already grabbed a plate for her. Watching her devour it with a ravenous hunger, he asked: “What did they want from you in the end?”

Byleth shrugged, telling him it was just administration things. In between large bites, she asked him to remind her to speak with Claude just when she had enough energy to work so they could ascertain the mission details before the day was out. It was at this point that Byleth had the sudden worry that she  _ may  _ have been becoming a hermit  _ and _ a workaholic. ‘I need to find hobbies in this place. Asap,’ she thought in fear.

Stepping into the early morning sun, Byleth resisted the urge to hiss at it, much to Jeralt’s amusement, as they made their way to the training ground. Most of the stronger knights of Seiros were out of monastery and Byleth was a dirty cheat, so it only made sense for them to spar with each other. A few students loitered around the area as Byleth and Jeralt took center stage. Felix watched on critically, while Caspar and Raphael were brimming with excitement.

Taking a stance, Jeralt pointed a training spear at his daughter. “First blood?” he asked as she took out a pair of training short swords. “We both know I’d win that,” she retorted with ease “How about first kill?”

“You’d win that too,” Jeralt chuckled, praising his daughter. (Byleth knew she wouldn’t. When she was younger, she had never had the courage or the guts to fight. Little encouragements and praise had gotten her a long way. Looking back, she was grateful for it. As an adult, it was endearing and sent her back into a time of simplicity. Like when you go through a box of old things and finding a blanket you had as a child.)

“Fine, fine. First kill it is,” he agreed. As he finished speaking, Byleth took her own stance, blades raised, blood pumping, eyes narrowed to catch any tell – not that her father had any, he himself had trained her in removing tells. The master to her padawan, so to speak. Nodding in unison, they started toward each other. Byleth dodge a stab from the spear in his hands, rolling out of the way. She darted forward, slicing an arc with her left blade. Jeralt blocked it easily with a spin of his spear. With a backflip, she dodged a series of strikes and a slice from the lance.

With both swords held up she ran at him from another angle. Jeralt dodged a few strikes only to end up with a jab in the arm. Something that was apparently on purpose when he turned his spear and struck Byleth’s leg, the distance between them too small for him to go for the winning blow to her chest.

Jumping back, Byleth landed on her uninjured leg and cradled the struck area. She rushed forward through the pain and tried to stab him in the gut but his lance clipped her unraised sword arm. Recoiling from the hit, Byleth left herself open to the jab in the stomach that finished the battle.

“‘ _ You’d win that too _ ’ he said,” she taunted with an ironically impassive expression, stabbing a blade into the dirt to use a hand to mock Jeralt’s words to the man’s amusement. “The student has yet to surpass the teacher,” he told her ruffling her hair after he walked up to her “Maybe next time, kiddo.”

“‘ _ Maybe next time kiddo _ ’.”

Her words drew laughs from not only the students around them but from Sothis who had appeared as a spectre in the training grounds sidelines. Caspar cheered as the fight ended, exclaiming that the new professor for the Golden Deers was ‘So fast!’ as Raphael clapped. As Jeralt began to put away his chosen weapon, Felix stepped forward and asked for a spar of his own.

With a shrug, Byleth agreed and he took one of her blades. It was over much quicker than her fight against Jeralt. Felix likely hadn’t expected an Assassin to fight with such a single minded focus, assuming that the focus she held in her spar against Jeralt was a student trying to surpass their teacher. He had barely dodged her swings, having learnt to not block against harsh strike when their wooden blades creaked under the strain. (A blade blocked could easily be pressed down to strike you. Something Jeralt had taught her early on.)

Eventually, the inevitable occurred and with Felix’s back against a pillar, Byleth placed the tip of her wooden blade against his chest and called the match. Placing both swords away, she began to critique the battle after Felix’ request. Noting that while he had realised blocking was a bad idea with the strength of her strikes, he hadn’t realised that parrying was still an avenue to explore, as was counter attacking.

“I’ve always been interested in your technique,” Felix admitted as their conversation drew to a close “You learnt from a former Knight of Seiros. Instead of taking the more obvious path as a myrmidon or the usual brawler, you chose to be an assassin. Good sparring partners like you don’t grow on trees. But know that I will beat you and I will surpass your strength.”

With utmost honesty, she replied “I can’t wait to see it. But why are you so focused on becoming stronger?”

He paused at her question. Placing a hand on his head, he mumbled “Why? Hm… I never really thought about that… I learnt to thrust a sword before I learned to write my name.”

Shrugging at her lifted eyebrow, he said “My upbringing wasn’t unique, however. That’s how it is for all children in my country. It was the perfect environment for me. I could live free of stodgy values and virtues.

“Grow strong so you may live, and live to grow stronger. That’s what I was taught,” he explained.

“You remind me of myself,” she admitted (Got hit by a car once, shame on you. Get stabbed, shame on Byleth).

“Now I’m intrigued by your fighting style, and by who you really are…” Felix said, and she broke out into a light sweat at his words. “But that’s enough idle chatter. Thank you, Professor.”

As she exited the training grounds, Byleth found a thin, lace trimmed undershirt lying on the ground at the entrance to the training ground. Quickly, she stashed it in her pockets, and wondered how she could find the unlucky soul that had lost it in a sea of students. Walking straight down the path and into the area for dormitories, Byleth found a frantic looking Dorothea pacing outside her room. ‘That was easy,’ Byleth thought, tapping the girl’s shoulder when her back was turned.

Dorothea jumped at the contact, turning to see the blank faced teacher looking at her. “Are you ok?” Byleth asked, tilting her head.

“Oh yes,” Dorothea anxiously dismissed “I seem to have lost something of great importance, the breeze carried it out of my window and its paramount I get it back… I’d go to Professor Manuela but I don’t want her to kn-”

Byleth raised a hand to cut her off, silently pulling out the undershirt. The sheer jubilation on the students face was heart-warming. “Oh Goddess, thank you Professor! Where did you find it?” Byleth quickly explained it had landed at the training grounds, and likely hadn’t been noticed because of the spars going on. “What a relief,” Dorothea sighed, rushing into her room to stuff it in a drawer. “Thank you professor!”

“No problem,” she called back, turning when the grass crunched to find Claude and Hilda waiting for her. “Oh look, my two trouble makers,” she said in favour of a greeting.

“Come on, Teach,” Claude said “You love us!”

“Pushing it.”

“You tolerate us!”

“There we go.”

Hilda snickered at their banter, saying, “I can’t wait for you to take our class officially teach. Classes with you start when?”

“The twelfth, meaning I still have time to figure out where your strengths and weaknesses lie,” she answered. “Bear in mind, I’m  _ getting  _ you on a wyvern one day, Hilda. Even if it’s the last thing I do.”

Hilda whined at the idea. “Won’t a pegasus do, Professor? They’re so much cuter.”

“Wyverns are plenty cute, Hildegard,” Byleth retorted, near aghast at the implication that they weren’t. Hilda merely groaned, as Claude asked: “Either way, your father said you were looking for me?”

Slapping her own forehead, Byleth said “Yeah, I was. I got side tracked because Felix asked for a spar and some critique. We have a mission outside the Monastery at the end of the month, Seteth has the details.”

Nodding they began to make their way to the second floor of the monastery, determined to find Rhea’s advisor, dropping Hilda off at the Receiving Hall on their way where she dived into a conversation with Lysithea with ease. Seteth had obviously been waiting for them, standing at the top of the stairs leading to the second floor with his arms crossed.

“As you have already been notified,” he began walking them to his office “Your mission this month is to subdue some bandits. This is a precious opportunity to provide them with  _ practical  _ experience.”

‘If they don’t wind up dead,’ Byleth couldn’t help but think, remembering the last practical experience the students had, which allowed Byleth to meet the trio of house leaders. And nearly die at the hands of bandits, let’s not forget.

“The knights will support your mission and are prepared to offer assistance, if necessary. They have tracked the bandits to Zanado, or the Red Canyon, which isn’t too far from here. The bandits are injured and shouldn’t be moving any time soon, so you have the chance to prepare your students for the upcoming trial,” Seteth explained“In short, this is no mock battle. You must be prepared for anything.”

Nodding, she noted the sardonic stare on Claude’s face as he looked at Seteth. She quickly jabbed him in the side with her elbow, causing him to nod. Dismissed, the pair left Seteth in his office as Claude grumbled “Bandits? Not very original, Teach.”

“Not interested?”

“Well as long as you’re with us, things won’t be boring at least,” he said, sidestepping her question with a practiced ease. Once Claude took his leave, Byleth slid into Jeralt’s office where he was, once again, drowning in piles of parchment and trying to organise the knights in some sort of cohesive manner. Taking a stack of simple requests, she began to sign a few things. (Byleth had long since come to know how to forge Jeralt’s signature, a remnant instinct from a time when it was necessary to avoid detentions).

“You seem well,” he noted. “Are you adjusting well to life in the monastery?”

“I think so,” she answered honestly, “As well as anyone can when they have a job shoved into their lap and the safety of reckless teenagers in their hands. Is this how it feels with me?” she inquired in horror. With a laugh, Jeralt shook his head.

“I didn’t expect  _ that _ answer,” he told her. “When we were mercenaries, I handled a lot,” he started, lifting his head to look her in the eye, “Not because I didn’t trust you, Goddess knows that you were smart enough to walk circles around most people. In fact, I’m fairly sure you did that for fun.”

“I did.”

Jeralt snorted. “I handled everything because, even though I knew you could handle the workload… I wanted you to rely on me, kiddo. Giving you some of the workload… it would have been like admitting my baby girl had grown up and wouldn’t need me anymore soon. You were already way too smart for your age, it felt like you never really got the chance to be a kid. So when we got here and you were thrown into a swarm of noble brats to teach, I thought it might be a bit much for you. Like, swimming for the first time. But doing it in the ocean for some mad reason.”

With a small smile, he said with pride, “But I guess I didn’t have anything to worry about.”

A beat of comfortable silence surrounded them as she took in his words. Her eyes stinging but unwilling to cry (she could remember graduating for the first time, the tight, bone crushing hug that a mother gave her lost child. The laughter of a younger sister, the pride of a father. Here, Jeralt’s words brought bittersweet joy. She may be missing the first two, but the pride of a father was still a warmth in her heart).

“If it weren’t for these papers on my lap, that I know took you an hour to organise -don’t lie to me-,” she started, “I would hug the crap out of you, right now.”

Jeralt laughed lightly at her words, saying “I would happily take that hug,” having long since gotten used to his daughter’s changing moods and the melancholy that followed around her.

(Little Byleth, barely five years old. Cold and expressionless after many nights spent with tears refusing to roll, like a child in mourning. One day she had simply gripped onto his tunic like a lifeline with small pudgy hands. Like she believed that, if he disappeared from her line of sight for a second, he would never come back. 

It confused him at the time, but in retrospect, that moment had brought them together. It had been what made him decide to place that small weapon in her hands one day in the future. “Grip it tight and protect your loved ones,” he had said once he warned her of the weight of responsibility in her hands, and grip it, she had. He always did believe determination couldn’t be measured with numbers. Byleth had proven him right.)

After a little time passed the conversation continued. “I heard about the bandits mission. It’s fairly routine for you by now, but it’s the first taste of real battle these kids have, don’t forget that.”

And how could she? (Her first kill was when she was fifteen. It was a quick and clean assassination, as quick and clean as a first time could be. She had vomited all over the place, taking a long bath before huddling under dozens of blankets as she tried to deal with the weight of a man’s blood on her hands. At more than one point in the following days, her father had sat rubbing her back as she vomited out her breakfast when she remembered her mark would never be able to have a breakfast of his own ever again.)

“It’s tougher to sleep at night if you let one of your little students die, so stay vigilant and lead them well.”

“To the best of my ability,” she said, finishing off her stack.

“I wish I could offer my support, but Lady Rhea won’t allow it,” he groused as he got up and pulled a book out of the shelf.

“You’re surprised?” she asked mockingly.

“For now,” he said, opting to not answer her. Instead, passing her the book in his hands (a tactics primer, his pride because Byleth was his joy.) “I’ll try to figure out what she wants from you. I don’t mind you settling into a life here, you deserve some peace and quiet, but don’t let your guard down. Ever.”

Getting up, she began to walk out of the room. “Bold of you to assume I’ll get peace and quiet with  _ my  _ students.”

With the ninth of the month came Annette’s birthday, and a bouquet of flowers was delivered on the morn, accompanied by good tidings. The girl almost seemed to be waiting for a comment like the one given to Ferdinand, surprised to only receive a pat on the shoulder. The eleventh came quietly, her last day of freedom before their temporary teacher gave in the last of the paperwork needed for Byleth to take over.

Apparently a special meal was being had in the dining hall. You got a little extra if you came with others, it seemed, something Byleth milked by inviting Claude and Bernadette (the small girl would waste away in her room one day, forgetting to eat, less vitamin D, weaker bones and joints, she was a general practitioning doctor’s nightmare). Surprisingly, the girl agreed to come and joined her. Seemingly eased by the fact that Claude’s nature meant she didn’t have to talk much. She even gave a few smiles at the dichotomy between the teacher and the house leader. He spent most of the lunch waxing poetic about the food before him, much to the wry amusement of the teacher.

“Do you have any hobbies?” Byleth asked Bernadette, the girl squeaking at the sudden attention.

“Ummm…” the girl dithered before whispering “I like to cook…”

“I wish I could do that,” Byleth said “Everything I make looks dubious at best. I think the canteen will be open later on, would you like to help me learn something?”

Bernadetta squeaked. She stuttered before deciding to just nod in the end with eyes scrunched closed as Byleth bumped a fist against Claude’s. “How’d you convince the head cook to let you do that?”

“I found some recipes for her,” the teacher replied “She likes me now.”

“She tolerates you, then?”

“Same thing,” she shrugged to the amusement of the two students.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My beta: You don't know when to use punctuation and when not to use brackets but at least there weren't any your/you're mistakes this time  
> Me: aight, aight, aight, cool, cool, cool, cool, cool, no doubt, no doubt.
> 
> Beta's summary of the chapter: In which byleth is mildly horrified about existence in general and sticks it to everyone including her own goddamn students, rip felix.  
> Me: isn't she always mildly horrified by existence though?  
> Beta: Yes.
> 
> (but seriously I write either sleep deprived, or sleep deprived and when its super late, I'm not surprised).


	7. Of Teaching and Planning.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byleth makes it through her first day/week of teaching and she's already tired as hell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter isn't fully beta'd cus my buddy got sick, but I wanted to get it out for you guys on the 3rd day as always. So here you go. For the most part, the story won't change once it's edited so don't worry about having to go back and read.
> 
> I write either sleep deprived or sleep deprived late at night and multiple chapters at once, so there are likely to be some contextual mistakes/misnamings (such as when I used Red Eagles a few chapters ago). Gave it a read through but again, there's still a chance.

Fishing. That's what her life had come to. Once upon a time, she would go driving into the city central, eating commercialised food from distant lands, covered in technology Fòdlan would never see, reading words they would never understand. But now? Fishing. 

Then again, beggars can't be choosers, and even sparring would fuel her budding workaholism, so none of that. Flayn had been kind enough to give her some bait to pass the time until she was able to get her own (a kind girl, an old soul like Byleth, if Jeralt had seen another. An odd turn of phrase whenever she spoke, also like Byleth. Except, as she got older her way of speaking - outside odd references that would never make sense to him - Byleth’s words had taken on a more  _ local _ dialect).

Thankfully, the weekend ended blissfully. Unfortunately, hell came in its wake.

‘Wow, so this is why all my teachers looked like zombies on Mondays,' she thought dropping a massive pile of books onto her new desk. As students walked in and took their seats, she began to place blank leather bound books she’d gotten from the Monastery’s scholars in front of them (‘all for the education of the children’ she’d told them, she’d been willing to pay but they had been ever so happy to pass them on for the sake of the  _ children _ ).

“These books will be your lifelines,” she told them. “I will explain the information as basically as possible before going into them with greater depth, before assigning you exam questions to prepare from. I will not be grading these books, they are yours to take notes so that you do  _ not _ lose them by the end of the day like free parchment.”

“Alright, today we’re going to talk about…” she started, right from the beginning of the syllabus and quickly making her way through the arbitrary conflict between Leicester and the Empire, using the board to make a mind map of notes and bullet points for them to comment (a system of teaching she had stolen from a multitude of teachers in her past). 

By the end of the first hour, they had gotten through the entire battle and she was moving down the rows as each student chronologically added to the great battle and what had led up to it. Once they had gotten to the end of the list, all the students stared at her blankly.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Professor…” Lysithea began, “Our last teacher had been trying to teach us that for a week.”

Humming, Byleth told them to put their notebooks aside and shooed the class away as the clock tower rang for lunch. As the class left, Claude, Ignatz and Raphael stayed behind. The Reigan heir walked up to her desk as she packed up and started to prepare for their next class.

“That was a great lecture,” he praised. “But my brain is fried. Got any ideas to get energy for the next class?”

(‘Copious amounts of energy drinks’ she thought, remembering the weeks leading up to her exams when she was exhausted and pretending sleep wasn’t a necessary part of human function.)

“Have you tried going for a walk around the monastery? Think too much and you’ll tire yourself out,” she warned. “Or you could go to the library, fall asleep behind a pile of books so Tomas and the bishops don’t catch you. But don’t forget to get lunch,” she called out after him as he went off with the two boys with him.

And then their supervised training and practical instruction began, and they made their way to make their way to the training grounds. 

“How in Fodlan did you get the training grounds, Professor?” Lorenz asked, explaining that it was near impossible to get bookings for lessons from Manuela and Hanneman. Byleth shrugged and explained she went to Jeritza and promised to do him a solid if he gave her his training hours.

(“Care for a duel?” he had asked her, a little dramatically as they shook hands on their deal.

“To the death?” she asked in turn, with the same level of drama.)

Hilda was constantly in her peripheral vision as Byleth directed Claude in axe maneuvers despite his complaints, before leaving him to his training after she told him to stick with bow training in his free time. “Keep studying tactics and formations in your free time as well!” she called out to him.

“We call it authority training,” he called back as she began to tell Ignatz to move his goals from swords and bows to bows and reason magic. There was just something there, a hidden talent for it waiting to explode if he gave it a chance.

Hilda, thankfully, trained through her complaints and swapped between lances and axes for the training despite Byleth wanting to get the girl on a Wyvern at some point. Looking over at Leonie as she did the basic forms of Jeralt’s techniques, she would likely do well on a pegasus as well considering the accuracy she got from archery. Marianne would need to continue her use of Faith magic predominantly but she had the reach for lancework, maybe a holy knight profession would be in her future.

So Byleth placed the weapon in her hands and going through some paces for the girl. After a few tries, Byleth applauded her when she made a perfect strike, Hilda quickly joined in and praised Marianne as the girl went pink. At the end of the session, she sent the students off for free study, informing Leonie and Hilda that they would be taking saturday sky watch duties for the rest of the month.

Days went by as they zoomed through the basic information from upcoming tests and tactics from past battles, with Byleth leaving free hours before and after classes for students who needed or wanted extra help. Raphael came, aware of his dismal grades and wanting to raise them, as well as the ever dedicated student Lysithea (who, in retrospect, never seemed to sleep. Opting to spend all her days and nights hovering over a book, straining her eyes in the dark).

By the time Saturday came around for Leonie and Hilda’s sky watch, Byleth was exhausted and just wanted to sleep.  _ And it had only been one week _ . 

Despite the collective urge all her students had to  _ win  _ (even quiet Marianne who just liked to be vindicated), Byleth was sure of one thing. They weren’t cohesive. Not like the Blue Lions who trusted in their leader, or the Black Eagles who had years of loyalty and hierarchy drilled into them, so much so that it was second nature for them to follow Edelgard (or a matter of self-preservation).

But the Deers… her hyper, loud, Deers didn’t have that cohesion. It made sense. The Alliance was a powder keg for political machinations, where destroying someone else ensured your continued survival and that of your family. Like Game of Thrones but not as brutal.

At the end of the day, they had the decency to listen when she gave orders (out of respect? Out of self preservation? Who knows, but at the very least it would keep them alive).

With thoughts swirling in her mind, she strapped both girls into the form fighting fliers’ armour that the academy offered. Byleth helped them both on the large animals that threw their wings outward and began a gentle trot toward the stable path.

“C’mon, let’s do this,” Leonie said.

“Counting on you,” Hilda replied.

“Don’t even think about it, Hildegard!” Byleth called out as the pair swooped into the sky when a small crooning caught her ear and tugging on her coat. Turning around a small wyvern hatchling was crawling around in the straw as it tried to waddle onto its feet using her as a balance. Pale white scales, and large lavender eyes that stared up at her, forcing her to crouch down and pick up the wyvern up. She scratched the scales between its stubby horns as it all but purred. “Should you be here?” she asked.

“Professor!” a stable hand exclaimed running up to them. “I’m so sorry about her! She’s always sneaking out…”

“She?”

“Yes… one of the Wyverns used in battle recently had a clutch of eggs,” the hand explained, going on to say, “She always sneaks out when we look away.”

When the stable hand tried to take the wyvern back, it whined and stuck its growing talons into Byleth’s cloak, refusing to let go. The stable hand continued to try and pull her away, while Byleth watched on awkwardly. “You need to eat,” the hand hissed, continuing to try and take her.

“Would like me to do it?” Byleth offered, patting the obviously stressed worker on the shoulder. The woman looked up nearly in tears and nodded strongly, passing a bucket of feed to Byleth. The professor sat down on a stool, holding the bucket up for the wyvern to sniff at before munching down on it.

“What’s her name?” Byleth asked the retreating hand, who shook her head. The woman explained that she didn’t have one yet. Stroking the baby wyvern, Byleth hummed. “Would you like me to give you one?” The wyvern looked up at her with large, blinking eyes. Chirping before turning back to her food.

“Alecto?” Byleth offered to the Wyvern who didn’t seem to acknowledge, favouring the large pile of food before her. “Megaera?” got much the same. But what got her attention was “Tisiphone?” The little dragon looked up. “You like Tisiphone?” Byleth asked again as the dragon nuzzled Byleth’s stomach as she scratched the scales.

“Now, now, Tisiphone,” Byleth said as she tried to place the wyvern back on the ground, “I have a practical battle to prepare for tomorrow, please let go. I promise I’ll be back tomorrow evening to feed you again.” Eventually, the hatchling relented. Returning to her mother at last, allowing Byleth to find flowers for Raphael’s birthday on the following day and confirm that the church’s trainee soldiers were still willing to come for the mock auxiliary battle.

Dinner was spent surrounded by her bright eyed students who were taking a break from their studies. After some disagreement between Lysithea and Raphael when Lysithea took offers for assistance as a jab at her age, the two had come to an understanding. Byleth watched as Lysethia quizzed him on questions he had gotten wrong in his homework.

Jeralt agreed to proctor the battle for them the next day when she asked as they ate, silently amusing themselves with the student’s antics until one by one they left. Leaving the father and daughter to their quiet peace. “The trainees who your going to be fighting against are… I wouldn’t say bad-”

“But you wouldn’t say good either?” she interjected, to Jeralt’s consternation.

“But they will outnumber your students nearly two to one,” he warned her as they finished their meal, taking the plates to the kitchens to be washed by the students who had been given late night cleaning duty as punishment. Jeralt gave her a map of the field and sent her to her room with threats that she ‘better not stay up late’. Byleth waved him off and went to her room where Sothis appeared.

“You’re a surprisingly remarkable teacher,” the woman told her, legs swinging to and fro in the air as she crossed her arms in thought.

“I had a good reference,” Byleth shrugged, hanging her coat up on the back of the door. Placing both her swords against the desk at the wall, she stretched her back.

“Is that a result of you being an ‘old soul’?”

“I guess,” Byleth shrugged. She crouched down to pull a sack out from under her bag, the contents clashing against each other and shuffling. As Sothis watched, Byleth pulled thick fabric and light armour from within.

“What’s that?”

“My assassin’s armour,” Byleth answered, explaining that if she was going to be taking those kids on a mission at the end of the month to face those bandits, then she wasn’t taking any risks with their lives. “The Church might be willing to gamble their lives, untrained as they are, but I’m not going to,” Byleth hissed.

Sothis giggled lightly behind a hand. “Those children are lucky to have you,” she said, “I don’t think anyone else would look out for them much like you do.”

Byleth scoffed. “Someone has to.”

“So why did you bring it out?”

“It needs to be fortified by the blacksmith. I’ve had it for so long it’s starting to get damaged in some places more readily,” Byleth told her. “If I want to make sure that it’s prepared in time for the mission I will need to give it in tomorrow morning…” she mumbled aloud in thought.

The next morning, just as dawn broke, the Golden Deers stood at the monastery entrance in their armour, picking up blunted weapons instead of the wooden weapons used in the mock battle. Claude used the same bag ended arrows as last time to avoid seriously injuring his targets, as did Ignatz. It seemed to come as a little surprise when Byleth walked up to them with a vaguely distressed stable hand. Lysithea asked, “Is that a wyvern hatchling?” and pointed at the small beast.

Hilda quickly came over and cooed over Tisiphone, telling her: “You were right teach, Wyverns  _ are  _ kind of cute.”

“What’s her name?” Claude asked, walking up next to her as the class circled around.

“Tisiphone,” was her simple reply. He leaned an elbow on her shoulder as he leaned forward to look at Ti. When the students expressed interest in the foreign sounding name, Byleth shrugged with a little glimmer of smugness in her eye. “Just… came to my mind,” she told them.

(Jeralt far at the back could see the excitement in Byleth’s eyes as she hid the name’s origin. It was exactly the kind of name Byleth would choose, obscure yet hinting at so much more. The students had a vague mix of shock and awe radiating from them as they pet the wyvern hatchling, who was preening under their ministrations.

To Byleth, the name was a soft reminder of the histories she had drowned herself in back then. Of a life she would no longer have. That was gone forever. Bittersweet in its nature, soothing yet a little painful. Something ancient that had and would continue to outlast them all. A paradoxical need Byleth had to survive despite the burning fear that once again she would lose everything.)

Byleth shrugged “Normal is overrated,” she answered.

Passing Tisiphone back to the stable hand, the woman went off back to work. Byleth quickly began to instruct her students to take position in the field just in front of the monastery where their battle would take place. First they were to arrange themselves in the southwestern corner surrounded by enemies from the left and in front of them, before she would rearrange them a little to what was most effective. 

Byleth would, once again, take a role in the fight to more closely watch her students attacks.

Nine units, including herself, from the Golden Deers were fighting against sixteen soldiers. Nearly two to one, as her father said. And so it began.

Leonie and Ignatz went to face the trio on the left, Byleth, Lorenz, Hilda and Lysithea went forward while Raphael and Marianne stayed back a little. Like with the inter house mock battle, they went about slowly but surely, keeping losses on their side as small as possible as they slowly gained ground and climbed to hill to where the enemy commander had made his stand. Leonie was making critical hits wherever she went, Lorenz was fast and dextrous enough to dodge attacks coming for him. Allowing him to always keep the advantage and weaken enemies coming towards.

Hilda was much the same, dodging consecutive attacks from two soldiers, weakening both to serve up for Byleth, a pace back to her left, and Lysithea who waited behind her with a Miasma spell growing between her fingers. Both of them were quickly dispatched.

Two arrows from Claude took out a soldier going for Leonie, Ignatz tried to do the same for one that had already weakened her. The soldier was hit but it wasn’t considered fatal by Jeralt and he stayed in, rounding around Leonie to attack Ignatz. The girl took it as a personal affront, striking the soldier, twice, so hard that he fell to the ground and had to be removed by his comrades.

By this point, more than half of the enemies were down.

Claude made a curved shot that left a soldier open for Lorenz to take down. Byleth was attacked by two soldiers, both taken out with practiced ease. Hilda found herself in a similar situation as earlier in the battle with two soldiers, both dealt with in similar manners. Midbattle, Lorenz spear broke and he was left injured by a soldier who used the opportunity to attack.

Raphael covered his retreat to Marianne for healing, as did Claude (taking down the soldier that Raphael’s fading blow had been unable to wipe out). While motivated by her previous wins, Hilda still seemed surprised whenever she defeated someone.

At the end of the battle, they walked back to the Monastery. They all looked bright eyed as Jeralt praised them. Especially Leonie when she was told that it was the right thing to keep back despite defeating the western enemies. “Your actions ensured that no other soldiers got around to attack them from behind. The same goes for you, Ignatz.”

“Father,” Byleth complained, “Let  _ me  _ flatter my students, please.” Immediately, the teacher turned to Raphael and praised him for covering Lorenz retreat, the other students laughing at her antics.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me: Furies  
> Beta: ……. Furries.  
> Me: I looked into the abyss and the abyss looked back.  
> Beta: hgfdisj;ghj


	8. Of Birthdays and Missions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byleth's birthday comes and goes with Saint Macuil's day, and they finally hunt down that killed Byleth (she got better).

It was in the middle of her second week of teaching when the unexpected happened. When she had told the students of her birthday, she hadn’t expected for anything to come from it outside of well wishes. Yet when she stepped into the class, the students were already there waiting for her. Even Flayn had come to wish her a good birthday.

A cake was sat in the centre of her desk waiting for her, surrounded by marked papers that she had left decidedly unmarked. At her hurried steps, Claude was quick to dissuade her worries of self marking, explaining that no one had marked their own papers, and Jeralt had looked over them to make sure there was no cheating lifting a weight off her shoulders.

“We figured, even though you just started,” the heir began “You deserve some time to relax a little. You don’t mark in class work, but you’ve already got a lot to do. We figured, taking the quizzes off your back was the least we could do.”

She lightly placed a hand on her heart, flattered by her class’ consideration and kindness. “Wait, wait, wait, before you get excited, There’s more.” Claude said, pulling a letter and thick bangle from within his jacket. The metal ring was connected to numerous leather bands, some with black beads, some with yellow, and one had a stripe of both hanging from it. A lone deer, similar to the one on their house flag, was engraved into the surface of the metal bangle. “We chose it together, you’re one of us now, Hilda made the bracelets, but we had the bangle made,” he explained, placing both in her waiting hand.

“Thank you,” she told them, genuinely grateful and touched with their desire to make her feel welcome. (But as always, her feelings would never truly see the light of day. As if a dam held everything back and she slowly suffocated from the lack of emotional release.)

Securing it on her wrist, she directed her happy students and Flayn to the cathedral for a celebratory service. The festivities were to last the entire day, sucking the life out of her as time went by. (Maybe she wouldn’t be the only one trying to get through it, she knew Lorenz wasn’t pious despite his attempts to appear so. Claude sure as hell wasn’t, whilst Hilda seemed on the fence. Maybe they could share in commissary together in that one way that all agnostics did, congregating at the back of the church with stiff smiles and full body nods in an attempt to end  _ any  _ conversation.) “How lucky,” Flayn sang “That you share your date of birth with Saint Macuil.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Byleth replied directing her students into the pews. “Can one truly know what date Saint Macuil was born? It has been 1180 years since the great war, if I’m correct. Who is to say that this isn’t just a random day chosen to celebrate him?” she continued, sitting down with Lorenz on one side and Flayn on the other, the three of them keeping the Golden Deers from bolting the second the hymn was over like they tried to do every assembly.

“Isn’t that a little sad?” Flayn mumbled, sombering a little.

“Not necessarily,” Byleth countered “Sometimes, people need to celebrate. Does the day really matter?”

Flayn’s smile returned, albeit a little smaller, but it returned nonetheless. Then, as the loud organ started to play, the Knights of Seiros walked in ahead of Rhea and Seteth. The pair walked in, or rather Seteth walked. Rhea glided in with grace not even found in queens who had trained to walk perfectly. Every step was pronounced by the music, as she made her way down the floor between the pews to the front of the cathedral.

The sounds of the organ slowly faded away as Rhea, with knights and Seteth behind her, stood in the light of the central window. She looked ethereal, bathed in the golden light of the early morning. Her voice was clear and soothing as the service began in the name of Saint Macuil. Words of prayer echoed throughout the cathedral as time went by, she quickly clicked her fingers when whispers caught her ear. Glaring at the students who could get in serious trouble if Seteth caught them.

It was reminiscent of her old school assemblies, but so much longer due to the sole reason that not only were there prayers to be read, but long scriptures and hymns to be sung. The longer time past by, the more she slipped further and further down into her seat. Likely, not setting the best example but in her defence, at least she wasn’t talking.

Byleth had long since mastered the art of lip synching from all the horrible services she had been dragged to on account of she and her father’s mercenary work (uncomfortable by the number of people around her, who would use any and every excuse to make judgements. They already considered she and her father to be little more than thoughtless brutes, she didn’t need to add to it with little nervous habits or ticks. But… she missed singing lullabies, and distractedly humming as she worked. The emotional urge to do so having disappeared with just about every other urge to express emotion outwardly when she awoke in this body. Yet her fingers twitched in hopes that one day she would sit at a piano again). She was prepared for what the hymn would throw at her.

“Mi-mi-mi-mi-mi,” Lorenz tried to scale, before giving a strong cough from the depths of his throat. “Ahem! Hmm… something appears to be wrong with my throat,” he tried to brush off, and Byleth nodded in understanding.

As the hymn began, the entire hall sang. Hands clasped, heads bowed and hearts as one. Their prayers reaching out, their faith holding them up. It was a gorgeous sight of unity and solidarity as the voices all rose and fell in unison. Religion truly could be awe inspiring in its majesty. But the greatest sight? Unity. Kindness. Tolerance. Something that seemed to be lacking whenever she had the heart to look.

After that, it was over fairly quickly. A chorus of church bells chimed, the sound resonating throughout the monastery as students bolted for the dining hall. The pros of a Saint’s day: special meals at the dining hall. They had left Flayn in the Cathedral to spend the lunch hour with her brother, despite offers to wait with her. Through the crowd, Byleth gave a wave to Bernadetta who was trying to sneak back to her dorm. The girl’s exclaim was loud enough to get through the crowd footfalls around them as she flushed in embarrassment. Waving back lightly, the archer went straight for her room.

“So Saint Macuil’s day,” Claude hummed from beside her, “How was the service?”

“You know full well how it went,” Byleth replied dryly as Hilda joined them at the dining hall entrance, having decided to sit with Marianne at the other end of their bench in the Cathedral. With light conversation they packed food onto their plates.

Very quickly the pink haired girl said “I am  _ full _ . Want some professor?”

As the girl slid it closer to her, Claude shook his head in dismay. “Don’t fall for it, Teach. Hilda’s gifts always come with a price. She’ll be asking you to do this or that for her in return, mark my words.”

“Should I be wary of the bracelet, then?” Byleth inquired, eyebrow raised in confusion.

“Nah, we got the materials for it so she can’t take all the credit,” he answered, “Therefore you’re not fully obligated to do her a favour.”

After a brief moment he said, “You know Teach, with Hilda knowing everything about everyone and getting them to do her favours, my schemes and your head for tactics, we could take over the world.” 

He wasn’t particularly wrong, Byleth noted. Hilda systematically made her way through the academy, finding poor unfortunate souls who she could convince to help her out. Throw in a more professional use of that skill, and the pigtailed girl would make her way through a political encounter with as much efficiency as she wielded her axes.

She and Claude on the other hand, already demonstrated an aptitude for working together. It wasn’t trust they shared but an instinctive desire to win. So far, that urge hadn’t pitted them against each other. But inwardly, Byleth worried what would happen if they ever ended up on opposing sides. Both of them said what they thought other people wanted to hear, to make their own lives easier. Would it ever get to a point where they were doing that to each other?)

“I guess,” Byleth mumbled eventually, “But I’m not particularly one for world domination.”

“Then what, if you don’t mind me asking, are you for?” he inquired, taking a bite of his food.

“I…” she paused, “I don’t know… Right now, I guess it would be keeping you kids safe and making sure you learn well but… outside of that I don’t particularly want for anything.”

‘Anything that I could actually  _ have _ ,’ she thought. (She wasn’t naive enough to deny the fact that she clung onto her past, her memories of people that no longer existed. She clung onto the people around her, so as to not lose them too. She didn’t have ideals and ambitions, she had people that defined her. Father, who called her an old soul, Sothis - her incorporeal partner in crime -, Tisiphone, her piece of innocence in a world barely holding its peace with a name that helped her remember that her past wasn’t some dream.)

“Isn’t that a little sad though, Professor?” Hilda asked, her fork scraping against her plate

“I don’t think so,” Byleth answered, tilting her wrist to let the beads of her bracelet rest against her hand. Rubbing it against her palm, she explained, “I guess it makes life peaceful in a way. I’m not constantly scrambling for something just out of reach. That’s not to say I’d be against it in the future, sometimes that kind of thing is needed but right now, I’m ok with not having that in my life. Right now, I have you guys and that’s enough for me.”

Claude and Hilda hummed in thought, absentmindedly chewing on their food as they mulled over her words. Soon the topic shifted to their upcoming mission in a weeks time. They would have to leave at the start of the week to make it to the Red Canyon in time (having been told by returning knights that it was where their bandits had set up camp. How sacrilegious). Maps they had received from scouts showed that the bandits had taken refuge on the islands that seemed to float in the air.

It would be difficult to traverse the ruins, finding places that weren’t likely to crumble under their feet and the weight of battle. “We got this teach!” Hilda exclaimed as they began to pack up their dishes.

“I don’t doubt that,” Byleth said as they walked back to their classroom. The service had cut into their lesson hours so much, that it was essentially pointless to try and run a lesson. But since she wasn’t allowed to let them out, she just sat at her desk and let the students do whatever they wanted, as long as Seteth didn’t catch them or get her in trouble.

The last day of the month, and thus the day of the mission, rolled around fairly quickly after that. Strapping into her assassin’s regalia, she strapped her pair of short swords to her back and they started the march out of the Monastery to the Red Canyon. Sothis was murmuring from the depths of her mind as they entered the area the bandits had set up camp. “So, we are taking children into battle, are we?”

‘It would seem so,’ Byleth replied, a hand rising to grasp at one of her blades as they started to draw closer and closer to their opponents.

“I do not think I could sleep soundly knowing this… I will allow you to turn back the hands of time. But know this power is not infinite,” Sothis warned, as Byleth tensed. Her grip tightened at the woman’s words. ‘How finite?’

“Your body can handle three uses,  _ maybe _ four. Do  _ not  _ risk four.”

‘Got it.’

“So Teach,” Claude said as they congregated at the bottom of the field “Any ideas?”

“There are eighteen of them from what I can see,” she started, unsheathing a blade “Generally spaced out fairly well. They’re kinda spread out, two to the left, five to the right. Claude, Hilda, Leonie, the four of us will go left, the other five of you will go right. Leave heavy damage to Lysithea and Lorenz. Raphael, make sure Lysithea doesn’t take any hits.”

“Professor, I’m not a child,” Lysithea complained

“I’m not implying you are, all mages are more susceptible to damage. What’s the point in having friends that will look out for you, if you won’t let them look out for you?”

“But Professor-”

“Keep complaining and I’ll take you off the mission as a whole.”

“Sorry Professor.”

“If there are no other complaints, let’s get this started.”

As they entered the fray, they all rushed into the fray. Claude went ahead, taking out an axe wielding archer and left himself open to the other one with him. Taking on a hit, he chugged down a vulnerary as Hilda attacked the remaining thief, dodging a hit aimed at her when he stayed on his feet despite the deep gash in his skin. Byleth cursed. “Stop rushing forward!” she yelled at them, as Lysithea went forward and defeated him with a Miasma spell.

“It is a precious opportunity to test my strength, Professor. I won’t make waste of their deaths,” Lysithea said.

“Don’t cause your own in the process,” Byleth retorted, catching up to Claude who had kept going to get out of range of the thief that had attacked him.

Three thieves came closer to them, one of them attacking Claude as they went up the stairs to the central island. Bleeding and bruised from four concurrent attacks but with one enemy down by his axe, Byleth stabbed one of the thieves in the side with a dagger, pulling it out as he fell to the ground bleeding before pulling her student away.

“Leonie, Lysithea!” she yelled, directing her students forward to take down the third as Marianna started to heal Claude. “What did I tell you?” Byleth hissed at Claude.

“Not to run forward?” he tried to smirk, wincing as a particularly broken piece of skin knitted back together.

“And what did you do?”

“Run forward…”

“From now on, we stick together. No more splitting up to take them all down,” she told them “Take down anyone in your way, we’re going for the commander. Understood?”

“Yes ma’am,” they all exclaimed in a chorus. From a distance, Claude shot a thief with an arrow, and Lysithea finished him off in a swarm of monsters. Raphael attacked a thief zeroing in on their mage. The claws of his gauntlet tearing into his enemies skin, as the thief’s blade did the same to him. Hilda took on his co-conspirator, taking damage of her own in the process. Lysithea took on Hilda’s enemy with Miasma, Raphael’s being too preoccupied with the massive brawler to notice her coming, slashing at him, but Hilda’s enemy was shifting his eyes in every which direction.

Byleth made her way to the stairs leading to the shortcut around their enemies with Lorenz. The bandit went running for her student and buffeting him with attacks. Lorenz fell backwards, falling into Leonie. The girl passed him onto Marianne at the back before jabbing the bandit twice with her spear. Grunting as she took a hit. He didn’t take much of a hit but the force of it had sent him staggering back, so the girl merely set him on his feet

Ignatz, who had been unable to attack due to being unable to get closer to the front line, shot at the enemy. His arrow piercing him straight in the heart, the bandit falling to the ground in a heap. Raphael pulled back for healing from Marianne, as Hilda took down the opponent that had nearly downed him.

Byleth took out three enemies on her way down the stairs to the shortcut, short knives being left behind in their exposed necks. Three more bandits began to make their way towards them from the north to lock them in place. Raphael downed a vulnerary to heal the remnants of the damage, whilst Mariane healed the Hilda.

As Byleth advanced to her fourth mark, Claude made a curved shot around her. His arrow lodging into the enemy’s arm. Unable to make an attack, Byleth went straight for the kill and stabbed her short sword into his chest. As the rest of the students bolted after them to dodge the bandits after them, Claude took a Nosferatu from a mage, who shot him in the neck.

The last the bandits with the leader went for byleth and ended up with two knives in his gut as a result. As Byleth and Claude neared him, the rest of the students tried to gather away from the remaining bandits, Raphael staying closer to them to avoid them reaching Marianne (the big softy, he cared for his classmates like siblings. Shielding them from damage whenever he could. Perhaps it would be smarter to offer him studies with heavy armour. If he was going to do the duty regardless of how much she yelled at him, maybe it would be better to prepare him for such a thing).

“You’re the mercenary from before, aren’t you?!” the bandit exclaimed, raising his axe slowly to protect himself. (Obviously, the lack of speed he had was likely due to the wound she had left him with that month ago. A wound like that doesn’t heal fast. He was never going to be ready for them.)

Holding her short sword in a reverse grip, she pulled out a knife. “You really should have thought this through,” she said, aiming a wrath strike and carving through his chest. At the fall of their leader, the bandits stalking her students fled.

“Those thieves ran out of luck when they entered this canyon,” Claude muttered, spinning an arrow in his fingers “They never had a chance.”

“I don’t believe in luck,” Byleth retorted, wiping her bloody weapons down “We make our own.”

“Well said. Your leadership was amazing, Teach. Let’s leave the rest of this work to the knights.”

At that she began to direct her students back to the monastery. Most of them alright despite the damage they took, blisters, bruises and bleeding cuts that vulneraries were able to heal well as they left the ruined city they had fought their way through.

Helping a student make their way down, Byleth looked back at the necropolis behind them. Glad that she hadn’t needed to rewind time, especially since that meant none of her students had been left open so badly that one had nearly died. Even Raphael’s self sacrificing act hadn’t left him severely hurt.

“...I remember this being a peaceful place,” Byleth spoke “But I know I have never been here…”

“I wonder why it is that you recall this place,” Sothis wondered, forming next to her as a floating ghost, as always. Noticing the twitch Byleth gave, Sothis said wryly (almost pained, Byleth couldn’t help but note), “You must be weak of heart. Each time I speak, it scares you so.”

“My apologies,” Byleth offered “I’m not one for surprises. You have a tendency to appear out of nowhere, speak out of nowhere. One day, someone appearing out of nowhere could get me killed, so I instinctively reach for my blade. I try to keep it under check but…”

“Not at all,” Sothis waved off “Although the battle is at its end, you are right to not feel at ease.”

Turning her eyes back to the city, Sothis floated closer towards it. Mumbling about her fascination of it, and Byleth’s nostalgia of it despite having never been there before. The assassin shrugged. “I am much the same,” Sothis admitted “Beyond the name and this strange feeling of familiarity, I cannot seem to remember anything else… And yet a great depth of emotion is tied to that sense of familiarity. Like joy and sorrow. Pain and love. All the things in between.”

“Teach,” Claude called, waltzing up to them at ease despite the bandages wrapped around him, “What are you doing out here? We should get going.”

She nodded.

“I see it is time to depart,” Sothis noted, her body fading away as she spoke “But know that time reveals all things. One day, I will remember that I have lost…”

‘I hope you do,’ Byleth thought in reply, walking behind her student.

‘By the way, it seems you’ve earned my gratitude. The thieves who came here are no more.’

‘Why so grateful?’

‘I am not sure myself, yet I am grateful all the same,’ Sothis answered ‘Now go, take care of your students.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got up to chapter twenty of EoLS today, just started the Battle of Eagle and Lion. Man I love the academy phase.


	9. As All Things Rise, All Things Fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whilst Sylvain is Sylvain, Byleth's students realise the path they have set themselves on and the ramifications it will incur.

As they returned to the Monastery, all of her students minus Claude stayed ahead of Byleth. Some of them going to the infirmary for mandatory checks, while the rest went for their rooms. “Hey Teach,” Claude began, rounding around to speak to her “On the way back, you seemed…  _ transfixed _ by the canyon. Did something happen?”

Byleth paused. She could either lie and have Claude (someone who could sniff out lies and liars in turn. It was easy as breathing to him) turn against her or she could tell the truth. Or, at least, some of it (maintain his trust, his respect, his aquisance to her command. And, most of all, his friendship. Ish?). After a brief pause, she admitted the sense of familiarity, nostalgia, she had surrounded by the soft winds of the Red Canyon and the broken buildings around them.

“Can’t say the same myself,” Claude replied, running a hand through his hair in thought “Maybe it’s a memory from when you were a child. Or from a past life?”

Byleth almost snorted. (She was absolutely sure it wasn’t a past life. She had grey buildings piercing through the clouds, not island like structures. She had drab heat and freak storms, not soft winds and blanketing mists. She had structures mathematically designed to take the load of thousands of people walking and driving across them. Not flimsy rope bridges that not only hung across seemingly bottomless pits but also looked like they would snap under the slightest of strain. No. She knew it wasn’t from a past life.)

“It’s not from a past life,” she told him, shaking her head “I assure you.”

“Ah well, if you can’t remember. There isn’t really much more to be said.” he drawled. “Although, I admit, there is something about that canyon that has me captivated as well. How did Zanado come to be called the Red Canyon. Nothing there was actually red.”

“Perhaps the buildings there were once painted red, or it was the site of a massacre,” Byleth suggested “It’s been so long, who is to say.”

“Too true,” Claude aquised. Nodding, Byleth patted him on the back.

“Go to the infirmary and get checked over,” she ordered, “And make sure everyone does the same, and has food. I have to go speak to Rhea.”

He nodded and went off to find the students who had snuck off to their rooms as she made her way up the stairs to the second floor (he’d mentioned that it was interesting that Byleth never called the Archbishop, ‘Lady’. It was a little comment he had made, as they sat in the library. He had brought it up whilst she taught him on a battle that she had to blast through in class due to the mission that had messed up her timetable.

Surrounded by perfectly selected tomes in the library that were chosen to venerate the church, she shrugged. “I’m not exactly religious,” she had told him simply, to move past it). Quietly, she passed by knights and bishops, the latter all but flinching at the dirt and blood that caked her body. “Hey Byleth,” her father said as they crossed paths in front of the audience chamber. “Mission go well?”

“No one’s dead,” she answered, “I’m counting my blessings where I can find them.”

“Smart girl,” Jeralt said, patting her on the head “This isn’t like our old jobs, kiddo. These kids aren’t like our company, this was their first experience in combat. Make sure their ok after this, alright?”

“I’ll leave them be for the weekend,” she answered, “If I go to them straight away, it’ll likely feel like I’m smothering them.”

“Monday then.”

Together they entered the audience chamber to speak with Rhea. Byleth for her mission report, Jeralt for who knew what, having opted to go after his daughter. Standing aside, as she decided to speak. “So, you have safely disposed of those bandits. I pray their souls find salvation.”

Ignoring the other people in the room, Rhea thought aloud: “But why did they target the students to begin with? We must further investigate the true cause of all that took place.” Addressing Byleth once more, Rhea waved a hand delicately “Until we know more, I ask that you support the students and relieve them of any unnecessary worry.”

“Of course,” Byleth replied with ease, as if she would do anything else.

“Good,” Rhea said, “I have high expectations for you.”

Byleth tried not to roll her eyes at the Archbishops words, thinking bluntly, ‘Yeah, you know where you can shove those expectations?’

“By the way, how was your time in Zanado?” Rhea asked, smiling beatifically. “Legend has it, in ancient times, a goddess alighted upon this world in that  _ very  _ canyon. For a goddess upon the heavens, Zanado could have only been a temporary haven.”

Raising an eyebrow, Byleth asked, “Temporary haven?”

“Long ago,” Rhea began, delving into a story, “The divine Seiros received a revelation from the goddess. A gift, to help guide the lost. The goddess is always watching over Fodlan from her kingdom above. However, in ancient times, the goddess graced this world with her presence and offered salvation to their people here. She is the mother of all life, the arbiter of every soul.”

“I see,” Byleth said blankly, with a full body nod.

“During your time here, I pray that you come to devote yourself to the teaching of Seiros.”

“Of course.”

Thankfully, before anything else could be said, Seteth walked in. Taking Rhea’s attention away from Byleth, long enough that she could sneak out with a quiet farewell.

Sothis started speaking seconds later. “A goddess… I have no memory of her,” she said, and Byleth could practically hear the shrug Sothis did as she said, “But then… I have no memory at all!” (Byleth knew that kind of attitude. She had that attitude for a multitude of years so long ago. ‘Keep walking, everything’s fine. The world is totally not on fire.’ you know,  _ that  _ attitude. The one everyone has when they try to pretend everything isn’t absolutely shitty.)

She went straight to her room, high fiving her father on the way out. She threw her weapons to the side, and unstrapped her armour. Pulling it over her head and kicking off the shoes, she fell onto her bed in an attempt to sleep. She lay there for what felt like an age, silence encroaching onto her mind and patience. Slowly eating away at it before she eventually decided to just get a head start on some more marking as sleep evaded her grasp. Ignatz did amazingly well, Raphael’s grades were getting better the more time he spent with Lysthiea. Leaning back, she tried to ignore the near instinctive urge to tap the quill against the table.

Sometimes… Sometimes she wondered if it was a good idea bringing the styles of teaching she knew into Fodlan. Yes, in ways, it was better. (Raphael remembered things much easier if he learnt it with his hands, Ignatz had to write line after line until he memorised it. Lysithea recited things out loud for hours and could recite it verbatim days later for you.) But even in her time, it was archaic, long abused and forcibly continued because no one had any idea of what to do next. How to improve it. So they just kept beating the dead horse because if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Except it  _ was _ broken and that was the crux of it. The ability to lie to oneself about how things truly are was amazing.

The monday morning came around and Byleth realised she had spent all weekend at her desk. Only breaking the surface with a gasp for the wonders of food. (Her stomach would growl and cramps would appear when she waited too long. Truly an inconvenience.) Time always did pass quickly as you busy your mind with work. 

(In one of her hunts for food, she had come across Sylvain arguing... no, that was too harsh - and implied the girl had a chance to speak. He was assuring her that he would never cheat, you know, the normal talk dating people had. Then the discussion, if you could call it that, took a dip. “I get it,” he almost seemed to seethe, “If I’m not your type, do you want me to introduce you to some other guys who have Crests? They’re all nobles, just like me.”

“What?! That isn’t why I’m- You- You’re worse than I thought!” The girl spat.

“I just want you to be happy. You know, get what you’re after. I hate seeing a girl cry, especially one as beautiful as you,” he said flippantly, shrugging. He tried to continue on but the girl huffed and stormed off, rightly so. He likely didn’t even realise how deeply he had offended the girl. Yes, there were some that wanted nobles only for their crest, but did he realise how he had taken her choice from her, not even giving her a chance to speak?

“So, Professor,” he started, turning to where she was standing, “Do you enjoy spying on people?”

“It’s sort of my job.”

“You look like you’ve got something to say. So say it,” he told her.

“You’re a jerk,” she told him bluntly. He got offended, as she had expected.

“You know how it is, most relationships, they end in heartbreak. Anyway, I don’t know why she’s so upset about me dating other girls. She didn’t care before she found out, so why does she care now?”

“She probably thought you’d change for her,” Byleth explained, “You put on this smooth act, make girls feel like they’re on top of the world and then crush their spirits without a second glance.”

“I really do hate seeing a girl cry, though,” he said sadly.

“Is that a fact?” Byleth drawled.

“Come on, it’s hard on me too! If only I had someone to comfort me. Professor? It’s ok if you want to console me… I happen to have some exquisite tea back in my quarters. You could come by, and… we could chat about love.”

“I have papers to grade,” she glared.

“Calm down-” he laughed, “You’ve really got no sense of humor, you know that?”

“I just don’t like to take amusement when it’s so unnecessarily cruel.”)

Entering class, a sombre mood seemed to have overtaken her students as their lesson began. Some, the more diligent ones took notes, but most just seemed… exhausted. (How she could sympathise. She’d felt like that for years, before she’d finally had the energy to crawl out of bed. Yet the first thing she did was learn the way of the blade and you can see where her life went from there.) Towards the end of the lesson, Byleth put down the chalk with a sigh.

“Alright, we have a few minutes left, and it’s kind of pointless to keep going when you all look like the dead,” she said, watching her class twitch at the last word, “What’s wrong?”

“How…” Ignatz began. “How do you move on from what happened yesterday…? Looking at you, it’s like nothing ever happened.”

Byleth nodded in understanding. “You know I don’t… express myself like most people. But I still feel things,” she told them, scratching the back of her head awkwardly, she heard a scoff from somewhere in the crowd. She was a little offended but decided to blame it on their quiet mourning. “I’m not… desensitised to it. Never become desensitised to it. I could lie to you and say it becomes easier, but it doesn’t. Fact of the matter is, this is the life I chose. That  _ you  _ chose to undertake.”

“But how do you just move  _ on _ ?” Marianne whispered, at which Byleth let out a sigh.

“Unfortunately, you need to accept it,” she answered, running her hand through her hair. “As time heals all wounds, it heals you from this as well. Eventually, I realised it was either me or them, my father or them, my comrades or them. Sad as it is to admit, you will realise this as well.”

“We know this already, Professor,” Lorenz replied.

“You know this in your mind, but you are all young, still. It will take time for your hearts to realise this as well,” she told him bitterly, running her fingers over her beaded bracelet collection. “For now, get out of here and get some lunch early. Afternoon classes are going to be used for self study.”

With that, she ushered the students out. Leaving her to stand in her class alone, surrounded by the silence that sapped her energy. She jumped up to sit on the desk, looking down to stare at the black and yellow beads wrapped around her wrist. A show of unity and respect. Yet she could not even protect them from this. She said it herself, this was the life they chose. But why did they have to choose it? Why so young? Why did the church make them  _ do _ this? Prove their loyalty in this way? 

What’s worse, was the upcoming mission briefing she was avoiding. She’d dodged Seteth with great difficulty, and Rhea didn’t actively seek her out thankfully (she was smart enough to not look a gift horse in the mouth). But she could feel it in her bones, that something was coming. With her head in her hands, she knew this was only the start before her students were forced further and further into this madness. There’s a  _ difference _ between mock activities and planned training exercises, and actually doing the deed. Coddling them wouldn’t help in the long run though.

Sighing, she got up. Her heels clicking as she walked out of the classroom just as Seteth walked by. Because, of course, life couldn’t be easy. He quickly ushered her to Rhea’s audience chamber before she could slink away.

Before they could even recover, Rhea was giving her students another mission. Arguably, a worse one. Frankly, it was  _ a hell of a lot worse. _

“We have received reports that Lord Lonato has rallied troops against the Holy Church of Seiros,” Seteth said, and she knew from then on everything was going to go downhill very fast. (She’d said it before and she would say it again. If a religious institute had an  _ army _ , let alone large enough to wage war against, then something was up.)

“Why would he do that?” she asked warily.

“Lord Lonato is a Minor Lord of the Kingdom,” Rhea explained, “He has been showing hostility toward the church for some time now.”

“A vanguard unit from the Knights of Seiros is already on its way to his stronghold, Castle Gaspard,” Seteth continued, (he could see the tenseness in her arms. Uncomfortable under the weight of the Church’s might, likely) “Lord Lonato’s army is nothing compared to the knights. It is quite possible the rebellion has already been suppressed.”

“Even so, I would like for your class to travel with the knights’ rear guard to deal with the aftermath,” Rhea requested. Do you ever have that feeling of existential dread, as slowly but surely your worst nightmares come to fruition and stalk you into madness as you fall deeper and deeper into the abyss until you eventually lose your mind? Byleth thought she was coming fairly close to it as the Archbishop and her advisor kept talking.

“Excuse me,” a blonde woman said, armoured to the teeth in the garbs of the Knights of Seiros “You sent for me Lady Rhea?”

With a gentle smile, Rhea introduced her as Catherine. Singing the Knight’s praises before singing the entire army. Then she said what Byleth had been waiting for her to say:

“This mission should prove useful in demonstrating to the students how foolish it would be to turn their blades on the church.”

Because of course it was. Like a queen subjugating rebels before they could turn treasonous. Like someone burning the ants in their garden before they all came inside. And her students were the ants. Rhea’s voice was like creatures under her skin, feasting on her heart and willpower. Like a siren pulling you closer and closer until you drown under her machinations.

Sothis’ hand rested on her shoulder as Byleth nodded blankly, trying desperately to get out of there. “If you’ll excuse me, I need to prepare,” she said. Folding her arms around herself, she rubbed her hands over the goose bumps rising on her skin. She needed her father. She needed to be safe again. Feel safe at the very least.

Is this how her students felt?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm on the last chapter in game, started writing ch 23 of EoLS today. Probably gonna slow down in terms of writing soon to prep for uni, but it shouldn't affect the story updates that much for now ^v^)b


	10. Duties and Exhaustion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byleth runs around the monastery to do her duties and talks with her students a little bit.

Byleth was busy. Man, was she busy. Between helping Mercedes set up her advice corner in the cathedral and apparently starting a lost and found service (she should have just made a box like her father said – she really had been silly in thinking it would only be a handful of things), she also had to prove to the professors that she wasn’t in fact incompetent whenever they offered to tutor her in certain aspects.

She wasn’t proud enough to deny help in magic, frankly she was abysmal at the art, but archery? Swords? Byleth was an  _ assassin _ , not a child. She’d mastered the two arts by the time she was eighteen, her father was going to accept nothing less if he was going to send his child across enemy lines.

Sighing, she noted that someone had left a Spicy tea blend at her door. No idea what that was about, she wasn’t going to complain. Tea was better than fishing, after all. Now she just had to find a tea set to have it with. (Her life had really devolved if she was  _ fishing  _ on a semi regular basis. Maybe she should try to make a small garden in her room using seeds from the greenhouse. Would the greenhouse keeper even let her? Goddess, would  _ Seteth _ let her?) In the meantime there were lesson plans to go over for the month ahead. They would have to leave midway through the third week to get to the mission field, so at least she would be able to prepare for the upcoming trials and tribulations they were forced to wade through.

She would have to speak with battalion guild master for the mission details, who could be found near the fishing pond apparently. Shoes crunched against the grass as the heat of spring began to increase, giving way to summer. Looking into the sky, the clouds slowly started to darken. “And so we enter the Garland Moon,” she whispered, only for light humming to catch her attention from a nearby dorm. Noticing her distance from the stairs, she shrugged and climbed up onto the veranda of the doors.

Knocking on Bernadetta’s door, Byleth almost smiled at the girl’s audible flinch. “H-huh?! Um, is someone there? What do you want?”

“It’s me Bernadetta, just checking in on you,” Byleth replied, the large wooden door creaking under her as she leaned against it.

“Oh… um, I’m fine.” the archer replied, almost confused.

“Alright.”

“Alright?”

“Alright,” Byleth affirmed, standing straight, “I’ll be around if you need anything. If you can’t find me, try my father’s office. I usually hide there.”

“You… you hide too?” Bernadetta asked, her voice nary above a whisper. Patting the doorframe, Byleth tried to smile.

“Everyone needs to hide sometimes.”

(A choice, a hand, that had been enough for her friend. The option. An anchor, a line, a life ring. Maybe the Deer would be good for her. Stumbling around in the dark was easier with friends, after all.) She jumped down from the veranda and continued back towards the market.

On the way, Raphael caught her asking if she had food. He looked a little dejected when she shook her head. “No matter how much I eat before I train, I’m always so hungry after,” he explained, “My muscles must be going through a growth spurt!”

She tried not to bring down his growing mood and patted the giant on the shoulder reassuringly. “Sure,” she mumbled, walking off. (That was the thing about Raphael. He was smart in terms of emotion, aware of how situations could affect people, the gentle soul he was. Not like Rhea who faked it, Raphael was genuinely kind. It wasn’t necessarily naivety that brought it on, nor the bastardised concept of innocence. The idea of purity that it connoted in modern culture, but rather the idea that there was no ill thought behind his actions. The world needed a little bit of innocence in it, Byleth felt. ‘Innocence is the progenitor of Kindness’ her mother used to say into her hair, when the world just wasn’t fair. But that was the thing, wasn’t it? The world wasn’t fair, so they should make it so, yet everyone merely thought they should work the system.

Raphael though… Well, Byleth herself was a glass half full kind of person. Nihilistically optimistic. The world could be ending, but she’d already died once, so why not have fun this time around? Seteth was the glass half empty sort. He saw the worst in everyone, likely so Flayn wouldn’t have to. Then there was Raphael. Kind, innocent in the good way, Raphael. He was the kind of person who saw a glass as two-thirds full. Completely missing the whole point of the thought experiment but with a great attitude!)

The market itself was boisterous. Knights and soldiers and students alike flitted from here and there in crowded chatter. Merchants tried to sell their wares as the cacophonous song of haggling filled the air. “Good morning,” she greeted, waving at the gatekeeper. They had met so long ago that Byleth had forgotten when exactly it was. She was pretty sure he didn’t know her name, having never actually introduced herself, but turnabout's fair play as she herself didn’t know his name either.

Lightly jogging down the long set of stairs, she was surprised when Hilda sauntered up to her through the crowds. “Professor…” she began, lightly hesitating, “Your clothes are a bit dirty. I’d have expected you to be more careful, seeing as you’re a professor after all.”

“Hilda?”

“Yes, professor?”

“You sound like Seteth,” Byleth tried not to smirk at Hilda’s affronted look “Do you have anything you need of me?”

“Can you look over my mock certification exam?” Hilda asked, crossing her arms with a pout. “Why am I even doing that, by the way?”

“So I know what you know and don’t, your old teacher didn’t mark very well,” Byleth shrugged “I’ll look over it tonight. In the meantime, would you like to join me in my duties today?”

“I would love to professor, but I’d hate to get dirty,” Hilda retorted, skipping away with her head tilted back smugly (like her baby sister, so proud when she could get the last word in. She’d rub it in her face for days, smirk whenever they talked as she reminisced of her win. Hilda was going to be incorrigible).

The guild master needed a few signatures for a contract, her father’s band having agreed to provide backup for the little baby Byleth. (‘Of course we would!’ a particularly grumpy swordsman had called out when Byleth asked to affirm it later on. ‘Boss can’t keep an eye on you, so we have to do it for him. Lest you get stabbed or shot with an arrow, or skewered, or whatever else only you could get up to! He’d kill us if anything happened to you and we weren’t there!’

Byleth was a little insulted, but she could understand why. She’d been stabbed once, a mark had gotten a lucky hit when she missed a knife throw. Her father nearly ripped his own head off in worry, she still had a scar from the stab on her side.)

Going off, Byleth ran a hand through her hair. This was supposed to be her free day and yet she had so much to do and so little time to do it. “Oh, hello professor…” Marianne muttered as she entered the Stables, standing beside Jeralt’s large horse. Tisiphone had obviously smelled Byleth on the other horse, as the professor took the time to groom Leah when her father couldn’t, and staked claim like a greedy little dragon. Lounging on the horse’s back like she owned the world. “Was there something you needed?”

“Not particularly? Did you meet Leah?” Byleth inquired, stroking Tisiphone’s scales as the little wyvern almost seemed to gurgle.

“Is that her name?” Marianne asked “I’m so sorry I didn’t know she was your horse...”

“Not at all,” Byleth waved off, “She’s my father’s. She loves apples if you want to treat her.”

“Thank you, professor….” The girl shyly nodded. After a beat of silence, the magic user asked: “Professor… do you pray?”

Byleth shook her head. “I’ve never been particularly religious. Do you?”

“Um… Yes, I pray for thanks or to ask for protection.” There was another moment of silence before the blue haired girl sighed with the weariness of Atlas. Like she carried the weight of her sins, and the world’s on her shoulders. “I’m not very good at talking to people,” she admitted “The truth is, I didn’t interact with people too often before I came here.”

“Why’s that?” Byleth asked, joining her to stroke Leah’s mane.

“No particular reason. I’m simply not very good at it. That’s just how I am.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Byleth said, patting her shoulder like Jeralt would her’s in comfort “I’m much the same. The only people I regularly talked to other than my father is Leah here, sometimes my father’s mercenaries, but many of them thought me weird, and saw me as the baby of the group.”

“I see…” Marianne whispered in thought. “I’m sorry… you shouldn’t waste your time worrying about me.”

Byleth looked at her, confusion nearly slipping into her expression. “Not at all, you’re my student. I’ll always worry for you. I do hope you’ll join me for lunch?” Byleth asked “It’s sweet tooth week and I’d love to try some of the dining hall’s Peach Sorbet.”

Quietly, Marianne nodded, bidding the teacher goodbye as she stroked Leah’s mane. Sliding around into the entrance hall, Byleth speed walked into the dining hall in hopes of getting a snack before her day devolved even further. But there, in the distance, was Seteth. Sighing through her nose Byleth prayed to any god out there for some sense of peace. But the Gods are cruel and she was their piñata.

‘Don’t be so overdramatic’ Sothis jeered from the back of her mind, ‘You’re an adult!’

‘The fact that I’m an adult is both terrifying and hilarious,’ Byleth retorted, walking up to the advisor. “Hello Seteth.”

“Professor,” he greeted bluntly, straight to the point as ever “If you have a moment, I would like a word. It has been brought to my attention that certain individuals have been making advances toward Flayn. Have you witnessed such behaviour?”

Oh.  _ Oh _ . This was hilarious to Byleth. The dreaded curse of the older brother. The overbearing weight of their opinion on whomever you brought home as they made your lover sweat and you uncomfortable. ‘ _ Poor Flayn _ ’ Byleth thought with a snicker. Ever the bull shitter, Byleth mumbled, “Actually…”

(She was so glad she never had an older brother then or now because the look on Seteth’s face as he glowered. As a girl she sympathised for poor Flayn, but she needed to get her amusement somewhere. And hey, maybe Seteth would go after Sylvain and Lorenz, the usual offenders, and it would get them to focus in class and stop her from getting complaints.)

“If you see anything similar in future,” Seteth seethed, his knuckles turning white as his fists clenched before he crossed his arms to regain some patience “Please inform the perpetrator of their peril.”

“Will do,” Byleth almost squeaked before quickly jogging out of there.

‘You’re horrible’ Sothis muttered, but she could sense the woman’s smile.

‘I’m aware.’

Eventually, her chores were completed and she was able to take a seat in her classroom. Students had decided to use it as a free study area when class wasn’t in session, some of them eating as they worked. A habit they seemed to have picked up from her, especially Lysithea who was sitting in her usual seat in the middle of the room hunched over three textbooks, a manuscript and a preparatory essay. From the bookcase beside her Claude was grumbling, as he returned books she  _ knew  _ he had stolen the month prior. Books she had needed and thus had to bribe the scholars for (making under the table deals with them was starting to become a thing for Byleth, slightly worrisome, she should keep an eye on that).

“First that bandit business, and now a noble rebellion? Are we ever gonna do anything but find and subdue people?” The house leader whispered, likely talking to himself in thought.

Byleth couldn’t help but reply though. “Unlikely.”

“Why do you say that, Teach?” he asked, turning to look at her over his shoulder. Shrugging, Byleth ran a hand through her hair. Standing up, she walked towards him so no one else could hear her blaspheming words. If she could at least warn one of her students, that would be enough for her.

“It is the way of things. The Church has a certain status. The other territories even pay tithe like nobles to their master. A kingdom without borders if you will,” She whispered softly, she could feel the eyes of some students watching them as the pair whispered conspiratorially. (As friendly as Byleth and Claude were with each other, throwing banter back and forth like old friends, it was unlikely that they would ever be truly close enough to plot together. As much as it was true that birds of a feather flock together, when the birds were a pair of schemers it was better to be safe than sorry. Hazards of the job, so to speak.) 

“And it’s people?”

“Everyone,” she replied easily “Anyone with some form of belief for the Goddess will look to the Archbishop, as the leader of the Goddess’ teachings. Anyone who refuses Rhea’s words is deemed a heretic of the church. Look at the Western church.”

“Like commoners decreeing a king to be false,” he tacked on “They’d be rounded up for treason.”

“He who survives is who is just,” Byleth warned him, “History is decided by the victor.”

“Why tell me this?”

“You’re to be the next Duke of Reigan,” she lied smoothly, “You should know how the world works. I get paid to kill, but even I don’t agree with the senselessness of war.”

“So I should be compliant?”

“No, you should be smart. In the meantime, learn.”

“Learn? Are you teaching me to overthrow the Church?” he whispered with a cocky grin (the kind that could seduce you into doing whatever you wanted with the right words mixed into it).

“No, I don’t actually teach that, but if that’s what you want to do, give it a try, I guess.”

He laughed at her blatant disrespect for the Church, yet once again it was the kind of laugh that didn’t truly reach his eyes. 

(Wariness mixed in with a hint of respect, he knew in a battle of minds and blades, he would lose against the Professor, but maybe one day he would have a mind that could rival her if not best her. Maybe one day, he could make this world a better one. The Alliance territory always was a breeding ground for new ideas, for change. Not weighed down as heavily as the other two lands by tradition and hierarchies that could be easily circumnavigated with the right assassinations. Maybe she’d get to see a world with a little less obsession with Crests, that was just, and where she wouldn’t have to raise a blade to kill another nobleman. Her conscience would never be clear, but maybe one day it would stop getting darker.)

The bell for lunch snapped her out of her musings, as she bid Claude farewell. Tapping Lysithea’s desk, she all but dragged the girl out of her studies. “But Professor-”

“You can’t learn if you die from hunger Lysithea,” Byleth said, cutting the girl short. (Too smart for her own good, slowly losing her life away as she tried to be the best. The world would pass her by and she wouldn’t even notice, until one day she looked up and everything around her was completely different and no one was the same anymore. The only thing she’d be able to recognise, would be herself.)

Lunch was peaceful. Lysithea tried to pass the sorbet off as nothing too special but the sugar seemed to bring joy into her face. Marianne went completely red as she admitted that it was, in fact, her father’s favourite dish with a stutter. Their discussion on the fundamental similarities and differences between Reason and Faith magics having eventually dwindled into a comfortable and amiable silence as they ate, the girls eventually left her. “Thank you for treating us,” Lysithea said as they picked up their plates.

At the continued, growl of her stomach, Byleth picked up another plate despite the light hearted swats the head chef gave with laughter. (They had picked up on her solemn nature, and like her father’s mercenaries, they had laughed in the face of it and treated her like a fawn lost from her… whatever they called a gathering of deer. Gaggle? No, that was geese. Herd? Yes, that was it.)

Like she’d told Bernadetta, her father’s office had become a small little place to hide. Safety in a place full of hostility and discomfort. On her rounds before she went on her way, she came across Lorenz at the battlements, seething in that forced polite way of his. Oddly put together despite the tangent he proceeded to go on about nobility and protecting the common folk. Right idea, wrong phrasing. He’d get there eventually.

Patting him on the shoulder she continued onto her father’s office. It was quiet except for the occasional pitter patter of feet as she quietly recuperated from the amount of chores she had to get done. “Somehow, you work more than I do,” her father said, pecking at her plate from across the table as he made his way through paperwork.

“It’s the students,” she replied, swatting his fingers away from her chicken. He snorted at her actions.

“Think they’re ready for such a mission right after the bandit one?” he asked, “You know how they were right after the Bandit mission.”

“They’ll have to be. It’s not like I can just say no to Rhea. What would I even say?” she replied, raising an eyebrow, “‘Hey Rhea, think I can take a rain check on that mission this month? Yeah? Can I perhaps do it…  _ never _ ?’” Jeralt laughed at the absurdity, sensing Byleth’s bitterness and underlying seething. “Maybe I’ll start a class ritual to ease them from the mission. Like how you and the guys go drinking. Except less alcohol because it’s not healthy for kids their age to be drinking and we don’t want to cause early alcoholism.”

(Her father merely nodded along, not questioning his daughter’s words. Having long since learnt that when she said something wasn’t healthy, it likely wasn’t, he recalled all the times she’d snatched a pipe from the hands of more than one mercenary as a child. They way she told their younger noble cast offs of the dangers of drinking so young. Drinking at all, in fact. The collective livers of everyone in his company were probably a mess now that he thought about it.)

Suddenly, Manuela burst in. Her voice lilting like she was singing her words. She apparently came to drop some papers off with Byleth before she got to the crux of her visit. “On a more… mundane topic, the weather’s turning,” she said. 

Byleth merely hummed, “It’s the Garland Moon, of course it is.”

“Got any plans to give anyone a garland?” the songstress asked, looking at Jeralt in the corner of her eye. The man in question, who had gotten his hands on Byleth’s unprotected chicken at last, finally looked up at the pair of professors. “Goddess, I hope not,” he blurted out, before placing a forkful of food in his mouth.

“But father,” Byleth started, turning to her father with the blandest expression possible. “I  _ love  _ him.”

Her father choked. “Love who?! This is the first I’m hearing of this.” Manuela meanwhile was laughing up a storm at the father-daughter pair. Byleth shrugged.

“I’m just messing with you.”

“Is it that Reigan boy? I’ll gu- oh,” he cut himself off, finally processing Byleth’s words “You’re evil.”

“Second time I’ve heard that today,” his daughter answered, snatching her plate and fork back “This’ll teach you to not steal my food I hope.”

Her father scoffed. “No, not particularly.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So tired, but yes Byleth is a little shit. As always. Sorry for the lateness, I got to the Ethereal Moon chapter in game (you know the chapter) and I needed to make a wholesome fic to save my soul XD look out for the Great Alcohol Escapade of the Ethereal Moon, 1180. 
> 
> Jeralt: you'll get along great  
> also Jeralt: Please don't get along great.


	11. Students and Their Teacher

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Byleth's students start to deal with the horrors they will come to face, Byleth teaches and the first batch of her Deer do their certification exams. Then they have to do their mission, and it all goes to shit.

The weeks leading up to the mission had been so peaceful, like the calm before the storm. The disquieting feeling washed off them as her students adjusted after the Bandit mission. A sense of calm. Sylvain, Edelgard and Lorenz’s birthdays passed without much blunder with Lorenz spending the month doing stable duty with Marianne. He’d given some brief complaints but they quickly faded away when he started working with her. (Byleth supervised with Tisiphone as always, feeding the small wyvern that seemed to be growing larger with every passing week. The stable keepers were talking about finding her an owner, their words in hushed whispers as they tried to keep Byleth from hearing. No one would want to ride a wyvern like Ti, a beacon in a battalion, waiting to be shot down. They refrained from doing anything concrete since the newest professor seemed attached but they had to do  _ something _ .)

One weekend, Seteth had ran a seminar for lance work and battalion organisation. Byleth had to come to make sure her students would behave and she sat there blearily staring at a wall in the morning thinking her thoughts. (‘The Beatles didn’t have moustaches… but suddenly… they  _ all _ had moustaches.  _ Interesting _ .) It was a rather eclectic cast who had shown up: Claude, Lorenz, Lysithea, Marianne and Leonie. (She hadn’t expected those six at once but it was certainly interesting. Seteth had seemed a little surprised when his small classroom had packed up with students taking notes and actually paying attention.)

They’d had another mock battle outside the monastery with Knight recruits, winning once more. It was empowering watching her students get more and more sure of their strikes and decisions, trusting each other a little more as they battled side by side, back to back. It was heart warming when they trusted her decisions, when they deferred to her orders more instead of charging ahead with teenage stubbornness. 

Dorothea joined them, Byleth having pilfered the girl for the month, and she fit in perfectly. Supporting Hilda from behind with her powerful lightning spells, it would be good for the girl to learn some healing spells to aid Marianne. 

(Her father had called her presumptuous, when she told him of her plans to teach Dorothea. Especially since the girl was still a Black Eagles student. She shrugged and said “I have a plan.”

With a look blander than his daughter’s on a good day, he replied “That worries me.”)

Lorenz was getting better and better at riding, his lance strikes getting more precise while he spent class practice hours with Byleth and Lysithea. The latter taught him to use reason magic and the professor supervised. (While she trusted the pair to use magic responsibly, Seteth didn’t particularly agree and she was forced to sit there for the duration of the hour as Lysithea explained the intricate roots that Dark Spikes took from Miasma.) 

Raphael was picking up axe wielding and the use of heavy armour, determined to take damage for the others as she had suspected. Ignatz was seeming to have a hidden talent in Reason, joining Lysithea and Lorenz.

Marianne’s faith magic tests were coming up with a resounding C grade that made Byleth want to weep with pride, and with some nagging Jeralt had agreed to help the girl learn basic riding skills having started from scratch. Hilda and Leonie were getting better and better at flying. It seemed that, despite her near constant exhaustion, her students were improving. So, overall? Worth it.

Claude had taken the Axe Fighter certification exam and passed with a hundred percent mark, Hilda joining him with the same mark. Leonie passed the Soldier exam with perfect marks and Lysithea, the amazing overachiever she was, took the Faith  _ and  _ Reason exams for the Monk class and had passed both with flying colours (where did that phrase even come from?). She’d given the exam to Byleth, saying “Perfect comprehension,” as she sashayed out of there like the world was her runway. And it  _ was _ . (That child would go far. But seriously, where were this sassy child’s parents?) It was incredibly hard for Byleth to not crush them all in hugs. Especially when Seteth had looked at her in shock as she’d turned in the exam results. Yes, she had been a little smug. 

(Manuela and Hanneman had stared at her in the Professors briefing the following morning asking how she did it. “Spite is an amazing motivator,” Byleth replied.

“That works?” Hanneman asked curiously.

“It doesn’t not work,” Byleth shrugged.)

Overall, things were going well with her new position. She’d let Flayn sit at the back of her lectures, letting the girl sneak in when her brother was busy. It was saddening that the healer couldn’t actually be part of her class but watching her laugh along as the students made jokes between each other. As she had expected war did break out when she  _ finally  _ let them play a rendition of kahoot with Flayn helping her proctor, using small chalkboards she’d, as always, bribed the scholars for.

An interesting thing she’d come across, was when Dorothea was flirting with a Knight. The poor man was red, his helmet in his hands as he bashfully scratched the back of his head at her giggles and words. Eventually he walked off and Dorothea noticed Byleth standing there against a pillar.

“Oh! Hello Professor,” she greeted awkwardly, “Were you… Watching that?”

“I happened to pass by,” Byleth said.

“You look like you have something to say,” Dorothea said, before bluntly continuing “I know what I’m doing Professor. My acclaim as a diva won’t last forever, after all. I must look to the future.”

“Fair enough,” Byleth replied, “Just as long as you’re safe. If you need someone to talk to, I’m here.”

“Thank you,” Dorothea said, letting out a sigh of relief, “You might think about doing the same thing. Your beauty - and you’re  _ gorgeous _ \- won’t last forever.”

Byleth sputtered as she shook her hands in denial at the compliment. “Getting older doesn’t bother me,” Byleth replied, “It means I survived to get that old.”

(A young girl, not even in her prime, never experienced love, never experienced the feeling of butterflies in her stomach, too focused on getting smarter and better until the chances to do any of that were gone in the blink of an eye.)

“I wish I could be that easy going,” Dorothea admitted, looping a strand of her hair around her finger, “I’m not just playing with these boys. This is my future. I’m grateful you don’t object, not that you have the right to.”

“Everyone looks to others for validation of their choices, whether they have the right to do so or not. I’m glad you trust yourself to remain true to your goals,” Byleth praised.

“I very much want to find a good partner here at the academy. Someone who will take care of me for the rest of my life,” Dorothea explained. Byleth nodded, applauding her pragmatism as the songstress blushed. “I’m glad you understand,” she continued to say “Not everyone appreciates the necessity of taking the initiative while you’re still in your prime.”

“It might not be what I’d do, but at the end of the day we’re different people with different goals. Besides, needs, must and all that.” Byleth replied.

“While I value your opinion, I would have fought you if you tried to interfere with my life plans. Unless… you’d like to take care of me in my old age? That’d be something, eh? How about it, Professor?”

“If it were up to me, none of you would have to face the bleak reality of growing up,” Byleth replied, “Take it from me, adulthood is a myth and it sucks. But no, I don’t think so.”

Dorothea laughed as Byleth invited her to lunch, “I must confess, I’m having so much fun with your class. If it comes to it, I promise I’ll come to you, Professor.” she said as Byleth convinced Bernadetta to come with them.

Time quickly passed by and eventually it was time to go to the Kingdom territory. Their mission wasn’t too far from the monastery, maybe a days ride at most, if they went at the absolute slowest pace. Depending on how the mission went, they’d likely be back by the next afternoon. The local village was more than happy to supply rooms at the inn for them if they couldn’t leave as planned.

As the students packed to leave for the mission, Claude had walked up to her in the entrance hall. “Hey Teach. I see you’re as stony faced as usual,” he greeted, humming, “I can’t tell if you’re feeling resigned or if you're just lost in thought. Or maybe you simply don’t care about anything that’s going on.”

“Can it be all of the above?” she replied, throwing a bundle of torches into a sack. (A few of the knights had mentioned the area got foggy in some months outside of the Garland Moon but she wasn’t risking her students because annual forecast said it wouldn’t fog. She had come from a time when the weather had a mind of its own, her people burning their planet alive more with every passing year. Bleeding it for resources they didn’t particularly need because it made money. She’d grown up raised to not take forecasts as gospel.)

Turning to look at him, she crossed her arms and tilted her head to the side. 

“Oh... Sorry,” Claude said “I really didn’t mean to be rude. I just find you fascinating.”

“I didn’t find you rude,” she admitted. (For a brief moment she remembered scathing remarks from dear friends. Care mixed into sarcasm, comedic betrayals. It reminded her of a generation she had left behind.)

“Actually, there’s something I’d like to talk to you about before we leave. Can you spare some time?” he asked. Shrugging, she nodded, to his amusement it seemed. Pointing at some of the things she was hauling, she told him she’d answer if he helped. “That’s just the sort of attitude I’d expect from a new teacher!” he laughed, “Speaking of, before you came here, you were a mercenary, right? Always getting your hands dirty on the battlefield and whatnot? I’ve been meaning to ask, did your father teach you to fight like that?”

“Yes, he did.”

“I remembered him saying something like that, but I wanted to be sure. Your father used to lead the knights, didn’t he?” Claude continued, “And I hear he was a legendary mercenary as well. It must have been hard on your mother when you followed in your father’s footsteps and became one too.”

Byleth could already see the awkward apologies and they weren’t even that far into the conversation. “I never knew my mother, she died giving birth to me,” she corrected, “My father was my sole caregiver.”

(Not her first father, not her first mother. They had outlasted her in the end. They  _ had  _ to. They had to take care of her baby sister. They would protect her from anything, right? She had to tell herself that, lest she lose anymore sleep to anxieties and people she never properly mourned.)

“I suppose you grew up moving from battlefield to battlefield with your father then...” he thought aloud, hauling a pack of vulneraries and concoctions into a saddle bag for when Marianne couldn’t heal as many people.

“For the most part,” she confirmed. “When it was a small job, he’d have some of the newer recruits take care of me, to teach them respect and all that. If they were needed, it was one of the mercs who’d been with my father for years, he’d lived so long that it just wasn’t possible to have him on the field. We called him Old Man Smokes, because he smoked. Constantly. He smelled of tobacco wherever he went. It came off him in waves. Goddess, it was the worst smell. ”

Claude laughed at her grumbling. “You know,” he started “For someone who’s right around the same age as me, you certainly have an unusual amount of composure. I guess it’s only natural you’d be different from young nobles who grew up in the lap of luxury.”

Byleth held in the sigh of derision. ‘Same age,’ she thought, ‘Sure.’

“You don’t seem like a noble either,” she retorted.

“Even so, I am heir to House Reigan, the leading family of the Alliance. But, I didn’t exactly grow up in luxury like most people of noble blood either,” he shrugged. “Hey, maybe that’s why you and I get along so well.”

“Really?” she asked, leaning forward to whisper, “I thought it was because we were both incorrigible heretics?”

He laughed loudly, catching the attention of some of the other students. (She didn’t want to expose these kind souls to the atrocities of war. Not self deprecating Marianne, not steadfast Lysithea, not Claude. Of course they heard of war. In the same way they heard stories of heroic deeds like those Catherine, she had watched the atrocities of war through the screen of her computer, of her phone, of her tv. But there was a difference between experiencing it so distantly and actually bearing witness. 

All her years of noticing things, of offering condolences and support she could in the comments before swiping past and back to her normal life, hadn’t prepared her for war. It hadn’t prepared her for Fodlan. She’d seen the horrors, however far removed. But these kids had only heard stories. They were never going to be the same and it was all Rhea’s fault.)

“Folks like us should stick together. As house leader, I’ll do all I can to help you out,” he said. “We can start by making time for more little chats like this.”

“Sure, sure,” Byleth waved off, “Help me find a tea set and it’s a deal. I have too much tea and nothing to drink it with.”

Things were going so well, until they weren’t.

She shouldn’t have expected a man such as Lonato to back down as easily as he had to the knights that had arrived before them. His son - Christophe - was murdered by the church who had extended its reach, as it was wont to do, when the Kingdom couldn’t deal with him. Why did the church even get involved? Perhaps it was Rhea, proving a point to the peons around her yet again.

Catherine had tried to excuse the Church’s actions, but it was fairly obvious she was at the very least infatuated with Rhea. At most flat out in love with the woman. Ever since, Lonato had harboured a visceral hatred of the Church and Catherine who had done the dead, and Byleth didn’t particularly blame him. On the one hand his son had been a treasonous kingslayer, on the other, the church really shouldn’t have had the jurisdiction to do what they did.

Still she kept her mouth shut as the cleanup continued. She and Claude sharing a look as Catherine explained her hand in Christophe’s arrest and in turn execution. Then, from the fog on their horses like Death they rode into the forests they knew like the back of their hands.

Most of Byleth’s torches were too far but she lit the one on her person. Catherine ordered them to make sure the enemy couldn’t circle around and her students packed together. “You know what to do!” Byleth yelled, raising her torch high. Claude went for a fighter hiding in the forest, attacking with his bow before he did a bold power slide and took out his opponents feet with an axe. “Didn’t expect that, didya?” he taunted the fallen merc.

Lysithea, Lorenz and Marianne used a collection of magic to take out an enemy archer who was aiming for Claude as the fighter got to his feet. Dorothea ran forth, double casting Thunder with each hand to take out another archer as the entire group charged forward with Byleth at the helm. Her torch guiding them like a beacon in the dark. With a torch in one hand, and a sword in the other, Byleth bolted forth and took off the head of a dark mage hidden in the forest.

With his death, the fog lifted. “I should have known it was magic,” Lysithea hissed, “How didn’t I realise?”

With her view cleared, Catherine darted forward and took out two of Lonato’s armoured soldiers with well aimed strikes. Her blade wafting red aura, the stone within glowing under the light. “Of course it’s you,  _ Thunderstrike Cassandra. _ ” Lonato himself hissed, as he made his way forth with a lance in his hand “It was  _ your  _ wretched zelochry that killed my  _ son _ .”

“Cassandra? I thought her name was Catherine…” Byleth mumbled. Nearby students like Lysithea, Hilda and Dorothea giggled at her words, her eyebrows scrunched together in confusion. Catherine herself laughed, stroking her Hero’s Relic as she said, “The only name I answer to, is Catherine. Prepare to taste the blade of one who serves the goddess. Now you face a Knight of Seiros.”

“The fog has cleared,” Lonato stated, “There’s nothing left to hide you or the filthy Central Church from the judgement of the goddess.”

Sighing, Byleth blew out the torch and tossed it aside. Hilda cursed as she missed two strikes against an enemy that came at her from the forest, cleaving into another enemy for Lysithea to finish off. An archer came closer and it’s arrow stuck into Lysithea’s arm, the girl smartly raising it sharply to protect her face. Snapping the arrow off, Lysithea threw a Miasma back at him. Marianne darted forward with a Nosferatu prepared in her hand. Throwing it in the archer’s face with brutal precision that Byleth hadn’t expected, Marianne blinded the man and knocked him out cold to clear Lysithea of more danger. All this occurred as Dorothea slipped through their ranks and electrocuted the man that Hilda had missed.

Byleth moved forward, once more leading the charge as the area was clear. Striking an unawares swordsman, she parried his blade to deliver another blow through the heart. Hilda took an arrow, responding in turn with a brutal Helm Splitter that took her enemy out. (Byleth had been forced to go to Alois, sit through a solid hour’s worth of stories about her father that were likely exaggerated, have lunch with the man, and then listen to another two hour’s worth of dad jokes before she could ask him to teach Hilda the attack. But, oh how worth it, it had been.)

Two Miasmas from Lysithea took out an axe wielder aiming for Marianne, as said healer ran forward to heal Hilda. Taking root in a forest, Byleth stabbed her blade in the dirt. Quickly, she picked up a dead enemy’s weakly strung bow and took out a lance wielder’s eye. Lorenz engaged another lance wielder as Catherine and her soldiers slowly advanced behind them. Raphael took care of Lorenz’s enemy as the heir ran after their professor with Dorothea, Hilda, Marianne, Claude, Lysithea and Leonie to engage Lonato and his inner circle.

Surrounded by a lance wielder, a swordswoman and a heavily armoured axe wielder, Byleth smirked. “You know what to do!” she called out to her students who responded in kind. Lysithea grinned as she took out the armoured knight out from a distance, nowhere near close enough from him to respond in kind. Dark spikes piercing through small vulnerabilities in his armour. Lorenz took out the lance wielder and Hilda and Dorothea combined forced to take out the swordswoman.

Too far to heal, Marianne used one of her scarce Physic spells to heal Byleth as Raphael covered the less wounded Lorenz. Ignatz threw a blizzard spell to finish off Raphael’s opponent, icicles darting from his fingertips to force his enemy to submit under frostbite, leaving only three enemies.

Lonato and his two personal guards. Claude rushed forward to swap Byleth’s weak bow for his steel one and she took out of the guards with practiced ease. Hilda raised her axe and dealt with the other. Meanwhile, Marianne finally got to the wayward Lysithea and carefully pulled out the arrow in her arm out and started to heal it. With another Physic, Marianne healed Lorenz as they all began to surround the lone Lonato.

Closing in, Byleth raised her blade, passing the steel bow back to Claude, as Lonato growled, “You have been deceived by that witch, I will show you the truth!”

“I have not been deceived, my eyes are clear,” she replied simply, “I simply have a duty.” She bolted forward, stabbing at his horse’s legs. Forcing him to the ground. Hilda came forth with another Helm Splitter, weakening him as Claude notched an arrow that sunk into the noble’s chest.

As he lay there on the ground, the cries of battle, the canter of horses, the striking of blades all gone, Lonato whispered softly. So softly that his words floated on the wind as he spoke, “That vile woman…. Christophe… Forgive me…”

From behind them all, Catherine mumbled “I never thought I’d see Lonato meet this fate.” After a moment, she congratulated Byleth’s students. “Well done, everyone,” she said, “Let’s gather our troops and go.”

Raising her fist, Byleth saw Claude stare at it in confusion. Rolling her eyes, she grabbed his wrist and curled his hand into a fist of his own before bumping hers against it. With a wry chuckle, he said, “Nice work, Teach… Still that fight left a foul taste in my mouth. That aside, did you see how Catherine fought?”

“I’m fairly sure we did most of the work,” Byleth replied. He laughed at her words, their usual banter shining through the bleakness of the battlefield, (like sunlight through stormy clouds, or a hand bursting through the dirt to pull you from a pit of nightmares). “I like your confidence teach, but we’re no match for the Heroes’ Relics. They’re on a whole different level. It makes you wonder about that legend…”

“The one about the relic that cut a mountain in half?”

“Yup,” he confirmed, scratching the back of his neck.

“Oooo,” Hilda cooed coming closer, “Are you talking about Relics? You’ll be able to use one soon, Claude! I just know it! After all, you’ve already been selected as the next head of House Reigan!”

“Easy there, Hilda,” Claude dissuaded, “I don’t know how apt ‘soon’ is. My grandfather is still unbearably healthy.”

“ _ Unbearably? _ ” Byleth reiterated with a raised eyebrow.

“Please don’t kill my grandfather,” Claude said bluntly, “I’m starting to get what your father meant when he said it’s a regular thing, having to tell you not to kill someone.”

“I’ve always wondered,” Byleth started, crossing her arms, “How come I’d never heard you were the heir of House Reigan until recently?”

“I officially joined the House last year,” he explained, “Before then I lived with my father. When I learned that my mother was the daughter of an Alliance noble, I thought the whole world was pulling a fast one on me for a week.”

“So that means your mother is Duke Reigan’s daughter, right? Where is she now?” Hilda asked.

“Can’t say,” Claude replied. “My mother is currently living in a different world than the one she grew up in and has absolutely  _ no _ desire to return here.”

“Oooookay,” Hilda drawled, “You sure have a lot of secrets, don’t you?”

“Just keeping a promise to my parents, make of that what you will.”

“What’s in it for you?” Byleth interrupted to Claude’s amusement. 

“Busted,” he said, grinning, “In exchange for my so-called secrecy, I’m free to do as I please, which is why I decided to see what the other side of my family was like. Which is also how I found out about my Crest.”

Byleth hummed in understanding as Catherine all but ran towards them, scroll in hand. “Sorry to interrupt, but this situation may be more serious that anticipated” the blonde began, “I found this on Lord Lonato. It’s a note that mentions a plan to assassinate Lady Rhea. We can’t tell who sent it, so the source is suspect but the content is too disturbing to ignore.”

“Let us report it then,” Byleth said, walking towards her horse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Starting uni soon, hooo boi. Shouldn't really affect chapters until like ch 30? I have up to 24 written so it's fine. Meanwhile, I'm still working on my comic and I'm rearranging script in my free time so that's fun. Check it out, Requiem on Webtoon Canvas. ^v^


	12. Woeful Returns and Gentle Concerns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Stay in school kids, and do some Heresy!" - Byleth, probably.
> 
> Wherein which, the Golden Deer and Dorothea return to the monastery and Byleth gives them a cold hard dose of reality. And pisses off Seteth. But those are two completely separate incidents and Byleth did absolutely nothing wrong. Except incite her students into heresy but that was nothing major. I promise.

“I am glad to see that you have all returned safely. The goddess graces you with her divine protection," Rhea greeted as Byleth and Catherine entered the audience chamber late in the afternoon. 

Byleth had sent her students off to get checked by Manuela and the other healers on duty. And then, to their confusion, sent them to move the desks in their class to the sides and fill the room with blankets and camping mattresses.

“But it was not only her divine protection that shielded you, was it? You are just as skilled as I hoped,” the Archbishop continued as daylight began to fade away in the distance. “Seteth tells me of how your students are progressing. You must be so proud.”

“They deserve the praise.”

“I am not so sure. I hear some of the students were… hesitant about fighting militia,” Rhea said.

“Of course, this is the second time they return with blood on their hands,” Byleth retorted. Anger bubbled up in her gut as she held back the urge to rip into the woman for her callousness. She may portray herself as a beautiful, gentle woman but she was really a wolf in sheep’s clothing. 

“They may be training to fight, but they are still young yet. Even still, it doesn’t matter what age you are. The blood on your hands sticks to you and never fades away, merely accumulates. More so, when the enemy are a poorly trained militia.”

“Even so, we must punish any sinner who may inflict harm upon believers, even if those sinners are civilians,” Rhea countered, as if she had a leg to stand upon. “I hope the students learned a valuable lesson about the fate that awaits all who are foolish enough to point their blades towards the heavens.”

(Seteth likely noticed her concealed rage. Palms scrunched into fists, knuckles white, shoulders back as if ready to punch the Archbishop at any second. What an unsurprisingly questionable thing for Rhea to say. 

And what of her words of Fate? What to say of Fate? The idea that every action taken, every step along whatever path was followed, would inevitably result in an unavoidable truth. It was like a rubber band that had been pulled on; it would snap back into place eventually. What a bleak thought.)

“Our real concern,” Seteth quickly said, pulling Byleth’s attention away from the infuriating woman he worked for, “Is what Catherine reported. The secret message that was in Lord Lonato’s possession. It contained a deplorable plot to target the Archbishop on the day of the Goddess’ Rite of Rebirth.”

“The plan seems unreasonable at best…” Seteth grumbled, “But a threat is a threat. We must maintain constant vigilance. To that end, I would like for you and your students to help with security on the day of the ritual.”

“Very well,” Byleth agreed, “You can count on us.”

“That is most assuring, you have my gratitude,” Rhea said, smiling.

‘You know what you can do with that gratitude-’ Byleth began to think, as Sothis materialised to place a hand on her shoulder, telling the assassin to  _ relax _ .

“The Archbishop and I will be confined to the Goddess Tower once the ritual begins,” Seteth briefed. “Of course, the knights will be on high alert but there aren’t enough to watch every corner of the monastery. It is far from ideal to be forced to mobilize students, but the gravity of this situation requires that we all bend to avoid breaking.”

“While there is no need to fear for my safety, we cannot turn a blind eye to those who would blaspheme so heinously,” Rhea said. Byleth tried desperately not to scoff.

‘I’m pretty sure it’s less blasphemy and more just you being a bitch,’ she thought cruelly, to Sothis’ amusement. 

Seteth quickly dismissed her with a warning to be on her guard and Byleth stormed her way to her room to change out of her assassin’s armour. The Garland moon had ended days before as the Blue Sea Moon swept in with rain and longer days. She’d missed Caspar’s birthday, ‘I’ll have to arrange for flowers tomorrow’ she thought tossing her plate armour off.

“Do you want to talk about it?’ Sothis asked floating above her bed with legs crossed and her chin resting on her hand.

“Not particularly,” Byleth replied, shucking off her robes in favour of an oversized tunic she wore in her sleep and loose pants. 

“Very well,” Sothis said, watching as the professor wrapped herself up in numerous blankets that she carried to her classroom. The students parted like the red sea as she walked in and tossed all the blankets on the mattresses covering the floor.

“Do you… do this often?” Dorothea asked, watching as she had the students organise it into a reasonable mess.

“We will now,” Byleth replied in a solemn tone before falling face first onto a mattress near the door, decreeing it to be hers. “Close the door, please Raphael.” 

With a simple nod, the blonde pushed the unnecessarily large doors shut. Her voice muffled by the mattress she was burying her face in, Byleth said to them, “Whatever you want to say, say it here. I don’t care if it’s heretical, blaspheming or just kinda mean. What you say in this room to me, after we return from missions, will not be repeated outside of this room. So… say what you need to say.”

“Teach, are we indoor camping?” Claude asked, dropping down with Hilda on the Professor’s right.

“Yes, we will be doing this from now on until... Until you decide you don't need it, I guess," she answered shrugging, as she watched the other students sit down and pick up their own blankets from the centre.

There was a moment of silence as they absorbed her words. Ignatz took a brief pause before he finally spoke. “We won. We should be celebrating,” he said, “Instead, we’ve returned with heavy heart yet again.”

“If we hadn’t done what we did, the rebel army would have followed this road all the way to the monastery. And they would have crushed all the little villages along the way. We stopped that from happening, we should be proud,” Claude retorted.

“Yes but… why was Lord Lonato so willing to die?” Leonie asked, “His militia were farmers, workers. Barely any soldiers. He should have known that he would lose, so why did he keep going?”

“Because he was willing to die to prove his point,” Byleth said.

“And what would that be?” Lorenz asked.

“His son died because the church extended a hand of justice against Kingdom nobility just because there was no king to do it,” Byleth explained, “Who’s to say the church had evidence, beyond a reasonable doubt, to put a man to death.”

“But believers of the Goddess wouldn’t do that…” Marianne whispered.

“You misunderstand Marianne,” Byleth said, “I never said that believers would, I said the Church did. Think of them as separate entities. The Church is an institution, an organisation with much clout. If the church said a man was to be put to death, most would step aside without even reviewing their claims.”

“Lord Lonato was willing to die to prove this?” Lysithea asked.

“Farmers and workers, like Leonie said, yet the church didn’t hesitate to send one of its best," Claude told her.

"Rhea herself told me that it would be a learning experience for you all,” Byleth answered in turn, “What do you think?”

“This is very close to heresy,” Dorothea said.

“I’m not against the religion, don’t get me wrong. Faith can inspire beautiful things. But if calling the church out for its brutal practices gets you branded a heretic and burned at the stake or struck by its soldiers, then something is wrong. They say the goddess speaks of kindness and unity, yet the Archbishop is willing to commit violence at the slightest act.”

Byleth sighed as her more devout students took on a sad look. “Listen,” she started, “I do not begrudge you your faith. I’ve seen it- the strength it gives you when you are afraid. The belief that shelters you when you are scared. But I beg you to at least think. This is just me, a filthy agnostic talking, but come  _ on _ . You’re all too smart to let an organisation that shouldn’t have this much power control your actions.”

“‘Be smart’,” Claude mumbled, “That’s what you said to me that day. We can’t be smart if we don’t know everything.”

“Exactly.”

“Wow,” Dorothea said, crushing a pillow to her chest as she watched on “Bonding through heresy, I never expected that. Professor, you sure run an interesting class, don’t you?”

“I live to please,” Byleth replied, “Do you want to hear about the time I called a minor nobleman a ‘Sanctimonious Bastard who married his sister’?” They all collectively choked at her words.

“Why would you do that?” Claude asked, his words chopped up by his laughter

“In my defence, he married his cousin. So I wasn’t far off,” she shrugged. Her more rambunctious students snickered, imagining their teacher say something like that even to a minor noble. It wasn’t very hard. The night passed quickly as everyone fell asleep one by one to stories and fairytales that Byleth half remembered, half made up. Claude and Byleth were left alone in the end, kept awake with small jokes between the pair of them.

“Hey Teach?” he whispered into the dark, getting a hum of acknowledgement in return since Byleth’s forearm was slung over her face as she tried to feign sleep. “Do we have a mission this month?”

“ _ Oh _ , yeah, I forgot about that,” she said, rolling over to face him “Someone’s trying to assassinate Rhea, we have to play security.”

“You… you couldn’t start with that?” he asked in disbelief.

A pause.

“Oops,” she inevitably said, forcing him into a fit of snickers.

“Teach, you’re the worst.”

“I’m starting to hear that a lot lately,” she replied.

Morning came soon after. It snuck forth in secret, hidden by a dreamless sleep. She was awoken by a gentle nudging on her arm that pulled her away from an unsettling sleep. (So cold, so alone, to the sound of sirens she had fallen asleep. Her eyes snapped open to blurry lights and soothing voices that tried to coax her into crying. Who was to say she would wake up again in the same body the next time she slept?) 

Opening a bleary eye, she found her father looming over her with an amused look on his face. He quickly helped her up to her feet, unsurprised when she stole one of the small blankets Claude was hoarding. She wrapped it around herself to shield from the early morning chill that bled her of warmth.

“I see you found your ritual?” he mumbled, his voice deep and low to keep from waking the students. She nodded, yawning as they left the classroom. 

Closing the door behind them, she asked, “Why so early?” 

She noted the lack of students wandering around as was usual on a saturday morning. 

“Seteth needs to talk to you,”

“About?” she needled, 

She tiredly scoffed when her father shrugged. “Perfect,” she drawled.

Walking into Seteth’s office alone, she wasn’t surprised to see him as immaculately dressed as ever despite the early hour. “There you are, I apologise for calling you in so suddenly. Please, sit,” he instructed, pointing to the empty chair opposite his desk. “There is a matter I would like to discuss with you. I believe I’ve told you this before, but it is my responsibility to aid the archbishop in all her duties.”

“Such as?”

“Spiritual instruction, ceremonial oversight, donation management - all of the church’s administrative tasks fall under my purview. I oversee not only the priesthood, but also the Knights of Seiros and the Officers Academy.”

“My apologies if this seems forward,” she started, “But how are you  _ alive _ ? One person shouldn’t be doing all  _ that _ .”

“The archbishop entrusts a great deal to my discretion and I am honoured by her confidence,” he said, in turn. He seemed a little flustered by Byleth's indirect praise, explaining, “I do not truly work alone but I do much of it, yes. Even when she makes decisions herself, she often seeks my counsel in advance. And yet...”

“And yet?”

“Your appointment to a teaching position at the Officers Academy was a complete surprise to me,” he told her.

“Just as it was a surprise to me,” she retorted.

“Then why did you accept?”

“You imply I had a choice,” she replied, “If Lady Rhea did not seek your counsel, then it is likely she knew her own mind and was adamant on her choice. I did not see a world where I could have said no.”

Sighing, Seteth admitted: “Frankly I do not know how to handle you. Had you been appointed a knight it would have been easy. Yet your past as an assassin isn’t a secret and I have nobles coming to me with complaints.”

(So that’s what it was. He did a good job of masking his worries with the complaints, likely a truth - nobles do so love their dramatic exploits and scandals - but Byleth had grown up reading half truths and obfuscations to find out what she needed to know.)

“Which nobles?” she asked, noting his tense stare, she shrugged and added, “Don’t worry, I won’t kill them. Half of them have likely hired me and don’t want it getting out. Just remind them of this, and all will be well. I’m not a snitch. I don’t grass.”

“Meaning?”

“I don’t tell other’s secrets, for they are not mine to tell,” she explained bluntly, her voice gaining sternness as she began to feel insulted. (Byleth understood pragmatism, she respected it, she was a pragmatic individual herself. But it  _ hurt  _ to be so blatantly accused like this. Was it because, despite it all, she had come to respect him?)

“Yes, well, I am the archbishop’s right hand, and yet when it comes to you, I have been told almost nothing,” he said.

“You don’t trust me,” she said for him.

“If you were in my place, and I yours, would you trust me?” he inquired as she stood up.

“No, but I wouldn’t say it to your face,” she retorted, “Do you truly think I would help assassinate Lady Rhea?”

“I believe you are a trustworthy individual-” he started but she cut him off.

“That’s not a no.”

“But my subjective opinion is not enough!” he told her, standing. The pair of them faced off, hands on the table, both of them leaning forward as he glared at her and Byleth gave a deathly empty stare of her own. “I have a duty to be  _ cautious _ . Should the archbishop’s trust in you prove to be misplaced, it is the faithful who will who will suffer the most. First I would like to know about your past.”

“No,” she said simply.

“Excuse me?”

“Did I stutter?” she asked, stepping back. “If you’ll excuse me I have a class to prepare for today.”

“Professor,” he said as she got to his door, “For the sake of us both, let us get this out of the way. We both have to work with each other, and I can use this information to deter the complaining nobles. Please.”

With a loud sigh through her nose, she turned around and said: “Fine, but make it quick.”

“Your father is Jeralt Eisner, correct?”

“That’s what I hear,” she replied sarcastically.

“That’s quite a vague reply for such a basic question. In the future, I would advise you to answer such questions with confidence,” he suggested, before going onto his next question. “How long has it been since you became a mercenary?” (Three years since her father let her go into enemy lines, ten years since she could hold a blade.)

Twisting a lock of her hair, she replied “Not sure.”

“And your age?”

“Well um…” she hummed and hawed before he finally decided to just kick her out like Byleth had planned. With a sarcastic salute, she waltzed out of there with her head held high and fist bumped her waiting father before they went to breakfast.

Despite the hubbub preparing for the Rite and patrols to protect Rhea, classes still continued. Lorenz passed his soldier certification exam, just as Marianne passed her exam to be a Monk. She seemed genuinely surprised to have passed, let alone in one of the best percentiles, going red at the praise her classmates heaped on her.

Byleth was able to drag Bernadetta out of her room again for help with cooking, and the girl watched in awe as, like always, Byleth failed horribly. She seemed so assertive as she directed Byleth in holding the knife properly. (At one point her father had walked in to find them early in the morning before even the cooks had arrived. “Father!” she called out, grabbing his attention. With energy he hadn’t seen from her in ages, she chirped like a bird in the early morning. Her face blank but the light in her eyes shining brighter than ever. 

“If you hold the knife like this, as you know, you can take out a man’s throat,” she said, waving her free hand in dismissal with a kitchen knife in a reversed grip. “But if you hold it like this,” she continued, flipping the knife over into a more reasonable hold “You can finely chop just about anything!”

“It’s all about context,” he said, ruffling her hair before looking at Bernadetta “Keep an eye on her, ok? Byleth gets a little knife happy.”

“I do  _ not! _ ”)

At one point, Lysithea had stormed up to her to speak about Marianne. The newly minted monk’s self depreciation seeming to be more serious than she had expected. Fear of being an inconvenience stopping her from getting involved in a serious matter that needed her healing ability. (“I… I know I was too harsh,” Lysithea admitted, “But she was… she was just so harsh to herself! And it was such a serious moment.”

“Alright,” Byleth said, “I’ll talk to her, but you need to apologise.”

“Of course.”)

Sothis was her lovely companion as ever, stopping Byleth from flipping a table or two when she could feel Seteth watching her like a bird watches its prey. She’d occasionally look over her shoulder to glare at him and he’d simply glare back.

At one point Ferdinand dropped by, having heard from Claude that she was looking for a tea set, offering his second to her. (It was endearing as he tried to play it off, “I accidentally ordered two of the same set,” he waved off, attempting to be the ever affable noble he portrayed himself to be. She sincerely thanked him and placed the set with her stacked boxes of scavenged tea, that hid the small pots she’d procured for the small indoor garden she was planning for herself.)

Then the complaints came. She liked Lorenz, don’t get her wrong. She’d tried to reign in his habit of asking girls out regularly. Piling him with so much work that he didn’t have enough time to ask girls on dates just to measure their birthing hips. Yet there were still complaints that filtered through. 

After one lesson, she kept him behind and he didn’t even seem mollified by the complaints. He’d thought she was asking for advice on her next lecture, he denied even the idea that the girls were complaining about him. Calling it a mistake. 

(“It is bred in me to treat all people with respect,” he had said. “Rest assured you will not find anyone more upstanding than yours truly.”

“Yet I still get complaints.”

“Perhaps the issue is that the splendor of my noble presence is driving the ladies to distraction!” he smiled beatifically.

“Nope,” she shot down with ease “It is your advances.” Then he got mad. Calling such complaints to be slander, asking who would engage in such nonsense. “A number of the female students, actually,” she answered.

After a sigh of frustration, he admitted that he had offered several the ‘honor’ of dining with him. “It is impossible to tell if even the most-well bred young lady is a suitable companion for me merely by the sight of her. So in order for us to get to know each other properly, it is appropriate that we dine together,” he explained, going on to say that they were showing such restraint by saying no when he invited them. 

“I would never insist, but I will admit that I have, on occasion, after a day’s pause, issued repeat invitations - in the fashion and style of a true gentleman.”

“Or they could just mean  _ no _ , they do not wish to dine with you at all,” she suggested, “And being asked again and again could be making them uncomfortable.”

“Ridiculous! Invitations from me, a problem? The very  _ idea! _ ” he exclaimed in shock he continued to try and sell himself a bit more but Byleth cut him off with a raised hand. 

“I don’t care. Fact of the matter is, I’m getting complaints from girls that your ceaseless invitations are making them uncomfortable. This school is where they live, breathe and sleep. They shouldn’t feel uncomfortable because one of their classmates doesn’t know the meaning of no. It is likely that they don’t feel comfortable telling you to leave them alone  _ because  _ of your noble blood,” she told him.

“So you will stop, or  _ else _ ,” she threatened, her week from hell sapping any patience she had left by that point. First an accusation from Seteth, then the mess with Marianne, the argument between the monk and Lysithea. If Byleth had the patience for gods, maybe she would have cursed them. “I like you, please don’t make me do anything drastic.”)

Despite it all, things were peaceful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm tired, you're tired, Byleth is tired. She loves these kids but man do they drive her crazy. "When your patience runs thin, try not to punch anyone." - Byleth, probably  
> My usual beta has been getting busier so this chapter was late as a result cus I had to find someone that could turn my word fart into a coherent chapter. I don't know how my beta puts up with me.  
> Many thanks to [Feroxai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Feroxai) for doing me a massive solid and betaing this chapter for me! You're awesome!


	13. Securing the Church

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Byleth tries to do her job, and tries to figure out the truth behind the assassination plot with help from her partner in crime.

With everyone informed of the potential threat on Rhea’s life, Byleth and her students convened in their classroom. Mattresses and blankets returned to where they came from, everyone was sitting at their desks as they discussed the situation.

She and Claude were at the front of the class structuring the discussion as they tossed a small stuffed toy around the class to keep them in order, everyone originally having clamoured at once to speak and be heard. (“You want to act like children, I will treat you like children,” Byleth had told them, getting the toy from the scholars. A questionable item for them to have but she wasn’t complaining.)

“Ok… So our task this moon is to patrol and guard the monastery in support of the knights, who are busy trying to stop an assassination plot,” the house leader began. “Thing is, I don’t think the bad guys are really trying to assassinate the archbishop.”

Taking the stuffed toy, Byleth said “It’s a distraction. To make it so obvious? No way it’s real.”

“Precisely. That “secret” note with the assassination plot on it… there’s just no way that was real. People don’t just carry around  _ secret notes _ . Someone wanted us to find it,” Claude replied, tossing the toy to the waiting Ignatz.

“You really think it’s just a distraction?” the bespectacled teen asked.

Hilda took it from him, adding: “That makes complete sense… but that begs the question, what are they really after?”

Claude raised his hand to grab her attention, catching it when the toy veered off to the side (for having such good aim with an axe, Hilda was really bad at throwing things). “If I knew that I wouldn’t be so worried. Let’s see… It probably involves somewhere that will be empty during the rite of rebirth, yeah?” Claude mumbled.

“Since the ceremony is at the Goddess Tower, it follows that everywhere else at the academy will be severely understaffed,” Lysithea reminded them, before passing the toy to Leonie beside her.

“Do you think they’re after the church’s donation money? I hear noble families donate quite generously,” Leonie offered.

“My bet’s on the dining hall. It’s a treasure trove of delicious food. Makes me angry just thinking about them getting their grubby hands on it,” Raphael growled, near popping the toy in his hands as he thought about it.

“Easy Raphael,” Byleth said taking the toy back, and putting away as she sensed the discussion coming to a close. “We’ll need to consider all options, keep an eye out as you patrol.”

“Let’s split up and look around in our free time. I’ll keep an eye on the reception hall!” Hilda cheered

“You should get in some training if you have the time, Hilda,” Claude warned, “There’s a good chance we’ll have to fight.”

“Not you  _ too _ !” Hilda complained, “Besides, I’m not the only one who needs to train. It’s not right to single me out like that.”

Suddenly the doors to their class swung open as a woman walked in with Cyril on her heels. “A secret meeting, Professor?” she asked. Byleth scoffed at her.

“Don’t worry,” she taunted, “You can tell Seteth I’m not going to kill the archbishop.” At the confused noises from her students, Byleth waved them all off tiredly. She didn’t have the energy to have this conversation again.

“We haven’t been introduced. I’m Shamir. I’m a Knight of Seiros,” the woman introduced, coming closer with quiet footsteps to shake Byleth’s hand. Byleth was immediately wary. (Small daggers all over her person, hidden in the folds of her clothes, all within reach. Silent footfalls as she made her way across, softened soles to dampen the weight of her feet. An assassin was in their midst.)

“Nice to meet you,” Byleth replied, “it’s good to see you Cyril, I’m surprised to see you here.”

“Hello professor,” the servant boy greeted, explaining, “I’m Shamir’s apprentice, she teaches me to use the bow and lances when we’re both free.”

“I’ll be sure to remind Seteth you aren’t planning to kill Rhea,” Shamir said, “I just came to say that if you need anything, ask.”

“Very well,” Byleth said in turn, before dismissing her students to their patrol and going off to investigate all the different places that might be hit in the monastery. Thing was, everyone thought everything could be hit in the chaos of Rhea’s possible assassination. The kitchens had centuries old wine bottles, the greenhouse had flowers from nearly a millennium ago that you likely couldn’t find elsewhere, the cathedral had a vault full of ancient weapons and powerful spells. The only place Byleth was sure  _ wouldn’t _ be hit was the Goddess Tower.

At one point, her father found her doubled over in the dining hall, heaving from her third run around the monastery grounds. He’d forced her to sit down, watching to make sure she downed the glass of water he gave her. “You don’t think Rhea’s the real target, do you?” he asked in thought. “I can see what you mean, but even so. The knights have their orders, we can’t abandon our duty to guard Lady Rhea. Especially on the night of the Rite, they say the goddess will return to walk among us. Not too likely, if you ask me,” he muttered. “Uh… Best if you keep that to yourself.”

Byleth snorted, whispering in turn, “Please, my entire class bonded a few nights ago with a bit of heresy. I’d be throwing myself under the carriage as well.” With that she went on her fourth tour of the monastery, speaking with knights and her odd friend the gatekeeper, but it was what Flayn said that caught her attention in the cathedral (not the bit about asking for candies from her brother, that was adorable).

“She’d said, ‘The Holy Mausoleum is only open on the day of the Rite’,” she reiterated for Claude as they had tea in the pavillion.

“Bullseye,” he said with a wink, before taking a sip, “Now we know where they’ll hit, so we can keep a better eye on it in patrols. We don’t know their intentions but we still have some form of an advantage now that we have their target.” He paused. 

“I have to ask, why the tea?” he said.

“Because I have papers to grade, my father says I need the sun and it would be weird for me to sit here on my own,” she explained, waving her hand to point at the other people in the pavillion, not a single one of them alone.

“I’m just a prop for you,” he mumbled in awe.

“I’m so glad you understand,” she snorted.

“Come on, Teach. It’ll be awkward if we don’t talk,” he complained, “How’s cooking with Bernadetta?”

Looking up at him from under her eyelids, without lifting her head, she said “Fine.”

“No…  _ Mishaps _ ?” he taunted. 

“ _ No _ ,” she answered, “Why, what did you hear?”

“Oh nothing,” he sang, with that her drive to work disappeared as she tried to weedle him for the information he was hiding. He seemed flustered when she called him reliable in the middle of their conversation, and he referred to her as an ideal professor. She waved him off as he tried to continue, “No, no, you don’t get it. You know what works. Lysithea needs strict ethic, Hilda needs coaxing, Marianne needs praise, you’re perfect for us!”

She scratched the tip of her nose as it went a little red. “Are… are you going red, Teach?”

“ _ No _ .”

“Goddess, you are!”

As he laughed, she picked up a few dry parchments and smacked him on the arm lightly with them. “That’s enough out of you,” she hissed before getting up to drag him to lunch. She dropped her papers off in her room, grabbing Felix along the way who had been exiting the training grounds.

“And so,” she said dramatically, the three of them staring at the Head Chef challenge dish in front of them “It begins.”

“It  _ looks  _ appetizing at the very least,” Felix said

“It  _ smells  _ amazing too,” Claude added, digging in.

“Goddess, protect me,” Byleth mumbled, taking an experimental bite out of the food before digging in like a starving man. Claude chuckled at Felix’s confused expression as he watched on, the lion eating his own plate. “My fave,” Claude said.

“Everything is your fave,” the Professor retorted.

Eventually, she left before they were done. Leaving Claude to work his charms on Felix as she went to Seteth to deliver some intel he’d asked for. It was hidden under the floorboards of the stable of all places. (The conversation was curt and tense but at least fists weren’t thrown.)

St Cethleann day came and went, leaving the afternoon classes to be cancelled. Leonie and Hilda were back on skywatch, their flying skills taking a back seat since their house had taken on stable duty instead. Surprisingly, the celebration coincided with Flayn’s birthday, so the pair had tea together that afternoon after the service. The girl, her student in all but name, had taken a shine to Tisiphone. Likely used to her brother’s wyvern, she was perfect with the little beast.

She was flattered when Byleth presented the Sweet Apple Blend, her favourite apparently. (Byleth wasn’t going to be the one to tell her it was merely the first she had grabbed.) She was graceful as she drank her tea, you’d never expect the poised girl to not be from a noble house. The same with Seteth.

The girl was excited as their discussion flowed easily, from the children at the market to close calls. Eventually, as their conversation lulled, Flayn admitted, “I desire to see the ocean again - it is difficult being so far away from it.”

“Where you raised there?” Byleth asked. Flayn nodded.

“I was born in Enbarr, but I was raised all over the place. I miss fishing with my mother,” she said, giggling, “Brother tries but he’s ever so bad.”

“It’s the thought that counts,” Byleth said

“Indeed.”

When Leonie and Hilda returned both where smiling, as they told her of the way the knights had praised them. Hilda spun Tisiphone around in the air as she cheered, the young wyvern cheering along as it tried to flap its wings. That weekend, extra classes were cancelled to allow the students to rest, as Jeralt dragged Byleth back to bed when she arrived at breakfast looking like a zombie. (Her students were highly amused, watching their indomitable professor be herded back to bed by her father like a wayward child.)

Ignatz asked to focus solely on bowmanship in his free time, and while Byleth allowed it she informed him he would continue to learn some magic in his free time and that he needed to set a goal for himself. He offered up sniper and she aquised. Hilda started to pick up the lance a bit more, working with Leonie and Marianne when she was free. The three of them supporting each other as Marianne continued to learn horse riding from Byleth’s father until it was decided she was good enough to practice with a student instead. Byleth paired her up with Lorenz.

(At the end of their second week, Hilda found her in the greenhouse. With her head in the clouds, absentmindedly searching for seeds for her small garden, she was surprised when Hilda walked up and greeted her.

“Hey, Professor! What are you doing, daydreaming in a place like this?”

“Just looking for some seeds,” Byleth explained, not looking up from the soil.

“It’s lucky,” Hilda said, “As spacey as you are, you’re always reliable in a pinch.”

‘Spacey?’ Byleth thought in confusion

‘You are a little,’ Sothis said.

“You daydream too,” Byleth retorted as she stood up, to Hilda’s glee.

“Not as much as you! It’s hard to tell what’s going on in that skull of yours,” Hilda chirped. (Pain, memories that she held onto, slowly pulling her into the rabbit hole as she dreamt of another world. She wanted it back, oh how she wanted it back so badly. A fool’s errand but one can pray and hope.)

“Your expression is always blank. Come on… Smile!” Byleth crossed her arm as she stared at Hilda. The girl merely laughed it off, “I was just playing around! Don’t get mad.”

“By the way,” the pig tailed girl started “In the next battle, may I focus on logistical support… Off the battlefield? There’s no use having a weakling like me in the middle of the action.”

“Nope,” Byleth replied, turning back to her seed hunt, “You’re not a weakling, you’re one of our classes best axe wielders, and don’t think I don’t notice you getting Lorenz to do your bit in class training.”

“Firstly, have you even seen me professor? Look at these noodly little arms!” Hilda cried “Secondly, why haven’t you said anything then?”

“In order, I have seen you Hilda. That’s how I know you can carry axes nearly at your weight. You may not be built like Raphael, but you’re still strong. And I haven’t said anything, because I’m waiting to see how long it takes Lorenz to notice himself. He’s awfully dense, that one.”

“Yeahhh,” Hilda drawled, swinging her arms to and fro, “But he tries very hard, for all his blunders.”

“Why don’t you want to fight Hilda?” Byleth asked, looking her in the eyes.

“Because even if I do, I won’t be of any help,” Hilda confessed, “My big brother is the type of person who’s supposed to be on the battlefield.”

“No one is  _ supposed  _ to be on the battlefield,” Byleth scoffed, “Besides, Hilda, can’t you see the class relies on you in battle. You’re amazing at axe wielding. The reason I want to get you on a wyvern so badly is because, firstly, it’s hilarious watching people cower at the site of a dainty girl wielding a massive axe on a brutal wyvern. But it’s mostly because you’re amazing at leading your class. You instinctively know where to go and which enemies are easier to take down and the class is starting to trust in your judgement. So no, I will not be taking you off the field.”

“And if Lorenz doesn’t notice by the end of the month, I’m calling you out,” Byleth added.

“Very well,” the student sighed, walking off

“In the meantime, go butter up Dorothea for class exchange for me,” Byleth called out, turning back to her seeds. ‘Being a teacher is hard,’ she thought to Sothis who appeared beside her.

‘Indeed, you have such lively children.’)

She and Claude had tea once again for his birthday, days before the Rite. Despite the edge of upcoming battle haunting them, it was still relaxing. “It’s simply because I want to know more about you,” he told her once she thanked him for his trust in combat.

“Please,” she drawled, “I’m the Queen of Secrets.”

(Not a word admitted in twenty one years that she had lived a life before that. Played Piano, had a sister, how she’d always sucked at cooking despite her mother’s prayers. How she’d spent all her time in school or learning to read sheet music. Not a  _ word _ , and that wasn’t going to change just because some charmer walked up and thought he could unravel her web of omissive lies.)

“What does that make me?” he asked, “The King of Schemes? No matter how hard you look, you won’t see what I’m planning.”

“Maybe one day,” she replied.

“How are your plans to snatch up Bernadetta, Felix and Dorothea?” he inquired

“Operation: Steal Some Kids is going well,”

“Why do you call it that, it makes you sound like some kind of kidnapper,” he told her, she shrugged continuing on.

“Felix is asking for more spars, Dorothea seems to like our class. You should have seen Manuela at the last Professors briefing when I thanked her for letting me take Dorothea. She wasn’t seething, but it was damn near close. I think we’ll have her in a few months. Bernadetta is going to be a bit difficult considering how often she spends in her room, but we shall see.”

Pulling out an owl feather she’d stolen from the beast that flew around Garreg Mach (it would occasionally perch on billboards to stare at her eerily, as if it were looking deep into her soul and could see all her sins and lies. And her internet search history... Did her sister do as she was asked and empty it after Byleth died? Ugh, don't think about it. Don't think about it.) she passed it to Claude. “Happy birthday, you menace.”

“Thanks Teach,” he grinned “I can use this to make a great quill! This one is gorgeous.”

As the bell rang, he cursed. “I’m afraid I’ve stayed too long. Thanks for this, Teach. Let’s do it again some time?”

“Sure.” she replied, waving him off to do whatever he needed.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Are you dead professor?"  
> "Only on the inside."
> 
> Docs was being a bit weird, so let me know if you see anything off?

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to resist the urge but damn, all it took was 2 and a half days before I succumbed to the urge to make another long fic. Curse my uncontrollable need to make long fics. My first real attempt to make a romance from scratch instead of just an established relationship or hinting at one. IntSys gave me training wheels in the form of support dialogue, so I sorta got this. Wish me luck.
> 
> In this fic, Byleth starts out at the Assassin class. In gameplay it's great that she starts off at a base class to allow the player to dictate how missions would go, but in terms of story its a lil odd that a seasoned fighter is at the same skill level as the people she's supposed to teach. The reason this is a transmigrator fic is solely because I was watching a bunch of vines waiting for my game to be delivered and I went "hey ^v^". Also its kinda dumb that Byleth knows almost nothing about her own father as much as he wants to hide things from a story standpoint. I understand not knowing her mother but Jeralt? that's?? odd.
> 
> Join me on [my tumblr](https://laetusfabricor.tumblr.com/) wips, snippets, and more!
> 
> For art go to my [insta](https://www.instagram.com/laetus__art/)


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